President Barack Obama’s traditional end-of-year press conference Friday was historic for reasons that had nothing to do with the substance of the president’s comments. All eight of the reporters who questioned Obama were women—and nearly all were print reporters—an apparent first for a formal White House news conference, a venue traditionally dominated by male television correspondents. 
 
 “The fact is, there are many women from a variety of news organizations who day-in and day-out do the hard work of covering the President of the United States,” said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, after the event. “As the questioner list started to come together, we realized that we had a unique opportunity to highlight that fact at the President’s closely watched, end of the year news conference.” 
 
 The departure was noticed throughout the room, as Obama passed over male reporters in the front row and called on their female colleagues. “This seems unprecedented for a solo White House press conference,” said Towson University Presidency Scholar Martha Joynt Kumar, who tracks interactions between the president and the press corps, noting she does not recall a similar occasion in any previous administration. “It certainly is for Obama.” 
 
 The list of those called on: 
 
 Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico 
 
 Cheryl Bolen, Bloomberg BNA 
 
 Julie Pace, Associated Press 
 
 Lesley Clark, McClatchy 
 
 Roberta Rampton, Reuters 
 
 Colleen M. Nelson, Wall Street Journal 
 
 Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post 
 
 April Ryan, American Urban Radio 
 
 Before the George H.W. Bush White House, it would have been hard to find eight women to ask questions of the president, as there weren’t that many on the beat. Kumar noted that 10 women out of 21 reporters in the first three rows of the briefing room were women, the latest indication that the White House press corps is growing more diverse. 
 
 The White House informed the television networks they were unlikely to get questions at the new conference because each had asked the president questions at least twice since the midterm elections. 
 
 “It’s amazing for that to happen as that room is filled with a majority men,” said Ryan, who shouted out a question to the president and was acknowledged over questions shouted by male reporters. “I’ve been in one other historic press conference and got a question in the East Room and he called on a number of black reporters and it was amazing to be there. it was saying that maybe this room and this building is trying to reflect society and reflect America.” 
 
 In that press conference, on Sept 10, 2010, Obama called on four black reporters out of 12 questioners. ||||| In August of 2014, the Archive-It team put out a call for URLs related to the August 9th shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Soon after we were joined by Archive-It partner Washington University in St. Louis, MO who contributed lists of URLs and solicited URLs from communities in and around Ferguson. Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities contributed a significant number of URLs extracted from tweets about Michael Brown and Ferguson. In December we expanded the collection to include content related to the July 17th chokehold death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, NY, and the reactions around the country to the acquittal of the police officers in both cases. The collection then progressed further to reflect the movement building in reaction to police violence against people of color. Today the #blacklivesmatter Web Archive contains news articles, blogs, social media, and other websites related to Ferguson, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, protests and demonstrations around the country, and seeks to document the movement as it grows and evolves. Note: Many of these sites contain videos, some of which may not play back in the page. To view archived videos click on the Videos link in the yellow banner at the top of the archived web page.
– One interesting quirk from yesterday's presidential news conference: President Obama took questions from eight reporters, and all were women. What's more, it was no accident, reports Politico (whose Carrie Budoff Brown got the first question). White House spokesman Josh Earnest explains: "The fact is, there are many women from a variety of news organizations who day-in and day-out do the hard work of covering the president of the United States. As the questioner list started to come together, we realized that we had a unique opportunity to highlight that fact." It's both a milestone and a sign of the times, writes Zeke Miller at Time. "Before the George H.W. Bush White House, it would have been hard to find eight women to ask questions of the president, as there weren’t that many on the beat." Also of note: It was during this Q&A portion that the president actually made some news, by criticizing Sony's decision to pull its movie The Interview. "See how newsy press conferences can be when women ask the questions?" tweeted Gwen Ifill of PBS.