From Draft to Distribution: Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Digital Press Releases
Processing the born-digital press releases associated with the Dianne Feinstein Senatorial Papers, 1992-2023, which are now available for online research, has revealed interesting observations about how such carefully crafted official statements make their way from draft to distribution. Just as nearly 16,000 digital photos received from the Senate Photographic Studio gave insight into Senator Feinstein’s career in photos, the process of assessing, preparing, and converting over 6,000 born-digital press releases turned out to be an equally eye-opening experience to better understand how Feinstein disseminated information about her political stances, legislative areas, and landmark achievements during her 30-year senatorial tenure. These press releases, which span 1998–2023, were arranged chronologically by month at the folder level into just over 300 digital objects. They join a range of born-digital and digitized material associated with the Feinstein Senatorial papers that have been processed and published to SearchWorks over the last year and a half, which include the Senate Photo Studio photos, audio-visual material, sound recordings, media advisories, “Dear Colleague” letters, and more.
Given the Feinstein team’s preference for the press releases to be displayable in Stanford University Libraries’ embedded content viewer, we first needed to create access copies by reformatting the original Microsoft Word documents (.doc and .docx formats) to PDF files. Bulk conversion using the open source software LibreOffice to reformat files via the command line proved the easiest and most streamlined method. Extensive quality control was then performed to determine conversion success or identify issues that occurred during the conversion process that required manual correction, such as truncated header images and embedded date macros that pre-populated the current date as opposed to the date the press release was issued. It was during this quality control step that an intriguing trend began to emerge: despite being undetectable when assessing original files in the preview pane, the Microsoft Word markup setting had been left on in several of the press releases. This meant that any tracked changes or comments in the original document were retained in the converted PDF access copy. These edits ranged from minor additions, substitutions, and sentence structure modifications to more detailed suggestions about word choice, tone, and clarity. Whether minor or more substantive, the markup inherent to these press releases ultimately highlighted the press teams’ commitment to “write in the Senator’s voice,” a skill that I am certain required both time and practice to fine-tune.
Once markup was observed in the converted access copies, a subsequent processing decision had to be made: how do we best preserve the markup inherent to the original files while still adhering to our chosen display strategy within the sul-embed viewer? My solution was to first create a PDF access copy using LibreOffice with the markup left on, which resulted in files containing underlined text in different colors to indicate tracked changes (as demonstrated in the first example above) and embedded comments (such as the second example shown above). I next created a second PDF access copy using LibreOffice with the markup turned off to provide researchers with a clean version of each press release file. These two PDF access copies were then accessioned to the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR) combined with the original Microsoft Word-formatted press release files accessioned as a preservation copy within the same digital object. An example of how both the markup and non-markup versions of a press release are displayed in SearchWorks can be seen below, with custom labels indicating which file is the markup version and non-markup version in the Contents menu on the left side of the sul-embed viewer.
Although most of the press releases issued by Senator Feinstein throughout the years tend to cover national and international issues impacting California constituents and the United States at large, there were also a few unique outliers that spoke more to Feinstein’s personal interests and professional connections. One of my favorites from this category is a press release regarding a letter that Feinstein sent to Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) to propose a friendly wager on the outcome of the 2014 World Series, in which the San Francisco Giants faced off against the Kansas City Royals.
Feinstein carried on this tradition of going all-in for her Bay Area teams when she issued a similar statement about a friendly wager she placed with Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) on the outcome of the 2015 NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Ultimately, the processing strategy shift brought on by the detection of tracked changes in the reformatted Feinstein digital press releases thankfully led to the preservation of hidden contextual information about the Feinstein press team’s workflows. As processing of digital material from the Feinstein Senatorial papers continues, we are excited to see what further discoveries are gleaned about the Feinstein office’s structure, functions, and day-to-day operations.