It's not just a software issue, it is also hardware. Do you still have a functioning Zip 100 drive, among the several other obsolete formats?
In 1992 George H.W. Bush was nominated as the Republican party candidate in the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. Bush's acceptance speech was the first time the Houston Chronicle covered an event in digital. I don't recall what medium to which the images were saved but it wasn't too many years before it was realized that those images could no longer be opened. It was an issue of format and multiple pieces of hardware that no longer talked to each other or lacked connectivity. This was among the reasons that the Chronicle continued using film until July, 1994, when the film processors were shut down and removed. Being one who primarily used Leicas, I was among the very last in our shop to continue using film.
But the real issue is what news organizations are doing with their digital files. Due to the expense and logistics of archiving digital many news organizations only save the final edit for an assignment. I, among others, wonder what will be done when situations arise such as 5th, 10th, 50th anniversaries of events that originally didn't have major significance come around. Or perhaps the coverage of a ball player's rookie season who goes on to a hall of fame or even a hall of shame. Where once news organizations had complete archives (the morgue) with significant staffs, now due to down sizing and expenses such archives are deleted as a line item in an upcoming budget. Who loses (?), ...as usual, the readers.
As far as cameras go, you couldn't give me a Nikon D1 series camera, or any of the D2 series save for the D2XS. Digital isn't like film (analog), when a digital generation advances usually the previous iterations aren't worth revisiting. A few exceptions exist, such as the Nikon D2XS or for that matter the Leica M8.2. Where I regularly use film cameras 20 - 30 years old, it will be a while (perhaps another 20 years) before digital cameras 20 or more years old are regarded as still useable. Then there is the issue of whether or not the sensor (ie, the camera) is still functioning.
Like it or not, we now exist in a disposable society. Where a Leica film M was built for longevity, most digital cameras are built to survive the release of the next generation. Still, my D3 & D700 Nikons could well be the last digital SLR's I ever buy given my age (soon to be 57.) Hopefully my M2, M4 and pair of M6's will be the last film M's I will buy.
If documentation exists on the file format, you can always get someone to write some code. These formats are not hard to unpack. My wife faced a similar problem about 14 years ago with some medical images stored in TIFF format, produced with a 1MPixel microscope camera- fairly advanced for its time. It was fairly easy to write a FORTRAN/Assembly program to unpack them and save in a new format. ".BMP" format is common, and very easy to generate.
