It’s a complete wipe-out for MTV News’ website, and possibly the end of an era.
Paramount Global shut MTV News down as a media organization back in May 2023, and now the MTV News website, containing two decades of archival content of writing and reporting, has been fully pulled in its entirety, according to Variety and other media reports.
As of Monday, when visitors try to access MTV News articles on MTV.com/news, they’re instead redirected to MTV’s main home page, which advertises “Teen Mom” and other reality shows.
The deleted content includes decades of music journalism amassing thousands of articles and interviews focused on countless major artists, some of it dating back to the site’s launch in 1996.
News content dating back several decades on CMT.com, which is also owned by Paramount, has also been deleted.
Former MTV News staffers took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to vent about the website shutdown and the deletion of the archives.
“So, mtvnews.com no longer exists. Eight years of my life are gone without a trace,” Patrick Hosken, former music editor for MTV News, wrote on X. “All because it didn’t fit some executives’ bottom lines. Infuriating is too small a word.”
“Sickening (derogatory) to see the entire @mtvnews archive wiped from the internet,” Crystal Bell, culture editor at Mashable and one-time entertainment director of MTV News, posted on X. “Decades of music history gone…including some very early k-pop stories.”
“This is disgraceful. They’ve completely wiped the MTV News archive,” Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hiatt wrote. “Decades of pop culture history research material gone, and why?”
There was even a suggestion to see if the MTV News articles might be available through internet archiving services such as the Wayback Machine, but it doesn’t seem to be available on those sites.
