The initiators of the project asserted that the intellectual content of newspapers serves an important role for researchers as it is for all intents and purposes the first draft of history.
Through microfilming the intellectual content, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress hoped to preserve it and improve accessibility.
"[4] It is imperative that the program create microfilmed surrogates that "maintain the integrity and authenticity of the representation of the original document."
Baker argues that the microfilming done for this project is ineffectual because it cannot capture all information (i.e. color illustrations) and mistakes were made in filming that obfuscate what content there is.
Baker makes his case in the book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper and a The New Yorker article entitled Deadline: the author's desperate bid to save America's past.