Should archives by behind a paywall?

[Illino]

Do you think newspaper archives should be behind a paywall? My personal opinion is that everything that is more than a year old should be freed up.

 

[Stitch]

You can usually get the archives to a lot of newspapers if you have a library card and run a search of their indexes.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

This would be the very first thing I'd charge for.

 

[Thomas Goldkamp]

Interesting question. From a search-engine standpoint, I'd say putting everything past a year behind a pay wall would drop your overall views by a significant percentage.

What other parameters are we assuming here? Is the newspaper already using a general pay wall with a 15-20 free reads per month?

 

[Dick Whitman]

It depends, and I'm not being flip, on the following question:

Can a newspaper make money on them by putting them behind a paywall?

If the answer is "yes," they should be behind a paywall.

I'm as frustrated as the next guy when I have to pay for my own old clip, but I definitely understand why.

 

[Stitch]

Keep in mind most newspapers make diddly squat from archives.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Keep in mind most newspapers make diddly squat from archives.

Sure, but what's the downside to putting them behind a paywall? Good will? How does it benefit the newspaper to make archives free?

 

[reformedhack]

This would be the very first thing I'd charge for.

Absolutely right. Information has value.

When your company has a commodity that people not only want, but will actively seek out ... why anyone would give it away is beyond me. Make money where you can, rather than missing the opportunity and then trying to cut your way to profitability.

 

[reformedhack]

Keep in mind most newspapers make diddly squat from archives.

Mainly because most of them sold their archives to services like Lexus-Nexus for pennies on the dollar, when they could be keeping the revenue entirely for themselves.

 

[Glenn Stout]

For most papers, the horse is out of the barn. As someone who uses newspaper archives extensively, and has done so for about two decades, most papers have made their archives available thru third parties (lexus nexus, newsarchive, newslibrary or free thru local libraries, although many PL's have dropped that benefit recently). Outside of a handful of national papers, I really doubt the revenue stream, for archive holdings that go back more than a few recent years, is significant when balanced against the administrative cost. I just wish ProQuest would allow individual a/o a la carte use.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

Outside of a handful of national papers, I really doubt the revenue stream, for archive holdings that go back more than a few recent years, is significant when balanced against the administrative cost.

Administrative cost? Do you not know that we have to maintain the archives anyway for in-house use?

 

[NoOneLikesUs]

Anyone ever browse through these?

http://news.google.com/newspapers

Unfortunately you need that precise link to get to it. Google will no longer bring up that page when you do a search for the newspaper archives. They're working on phasing it out.

 

[slappy4428]

This would be the very first thing I'd charge for.

This.

 

[Glenn Stout]

Outside of a handful of national papers, I really doubt the revenue stream, for archive holdings that go back more than a few recent years, is significant when balanced against the administrative cost.

Administrative cost? Do you not know that we have to maintain the archives anyway for in-house use?

Not every paper does, and some do not include the entire archive, particularly pre mid-1980s, and unless you job it out, if you do you still have to create and manage whatever pay system you decide to use, and that takes someone's time and energy. In a not completely disimilar situation, some libraries and archives have recently made some significant holdings available online for free that they used to charge for simply because the cost/benefit isn't there - it's more costly for them to charge for reproduction and research than just give it away.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

Outside of a handful of national papers, I really doubt the revenue stream, for archive holdings that go back more than a few recent years, is significant when balanced against the administrative cost.

Administrative cost? Do you not know that we have to maintain the archives anyway for in-house use?

Not every paper does, and some do not include the entire archive, particularly pre mid-1980s, and unless you job it out, if you do you still have to create and manage whatever pay system you decide to use, and that takes someone's time and energy. In a not completely disimilar situation, some libraries and archives have recently made some significant holdings available online for free that they used to charge for simply because the cost/benefit isn't there - it's more costly for them to charge for reproduction and research than just give it away.

Well, we charge for ours.

 

[playthrough]

I am astonished that the SI Vault is free. What a missed opportunity. Would you pay a nickel to read your favorite 20-year-old story? A quarter to browse every issue from 1974? A buck for 24-hour access to research something?

Get people to put a credit card on file and let the billing begin.

 

[Mystery Meat II]

A thought that just hit me as I was skimming the thread: What happens if you're freelancing a story for an out of town paper that has runs a paywall, and you want a copy to put in your clip file? Do you get them to mail you a copy? E-mail a copy if, like me, your clips are in a Word doc? Pay for a day of access (if that's possible) in order to get a copy?

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

A thought that just hit me as I was skimming the thread: What happens if you're freelancing a story for an out of town paper that has runs a paywall, and you want a copy to put in your clip file? Do you get them to mail you a copy? E-mail a copy if, like me, your clips are in a Word doc? Pay for a day of access (if that's possible) in order to get a copy?

We don't charge until the story is two weeks old. Then you can pay for stuff at a variety of levels, ranging from $3 for one story up to a year's access to up to 1,000 files for about two grand.