Published clips that are forever vanished: This tragedy is near and dear to my heart, and one that is sadly all too common among journalists, myself included. There’s basically no evidence of the first three years of my career because the publication I worked at redesigned its website and wiped out the entire archive. Cool, super fun.

So what do you do when it happens to you? Well, the best advice is to head it off before it becomes an issue: Always save PDFs of your clips once they’re published! You never know when an outlet is going to fold, or a site redesign will wipe out its archives, so saving those PDFs is critical.

More on that, plus what a pitch rejection really means, today's FWT newsletter: