Since 2004, the Libraryof Congress, abeholden stakeholder in the risk assessment of and consideration for file formats, has supported the preservation of and access to digitized historic newspapers through the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a distributed, mass digitization program. This paper evaluates the implementation and validation of PDF as specified for NDNP, explores the benefits of PDF/A, and analyzes the adverse effects for digital preservation as realized in current digitization workflows.