I've posted before about the paid wall behind which the Herald's archives sit. Many papers do the same thing. Obviously as newspapers move toward more of an online medium and away from the printing press, having searchable content will be key to maintaining and attracting eyeballs. I don't think a pay per view model will be sustainable in the future.
In any case, I was reading an article on The Toledo Blade's web site today about the expatriate American, William Morgan, who fought with Fidel Castro's 26th of July rebels during the Cuban Revolution. There's been a legal battle going on related to the long dead guerrilla's citizenship and The Blade mentions previous reporting it has done on the matter in the past. I was thinking that it would be great if The Blade posted links to that previous reporting. That way an interested party could go back and see how the story evolved. This would require bringing those articles out from behind the paid wall, even if only temporarily.
This could be an interim step toward moving to an ad supported, free archive. Probably too reasonable for anyone at 1 Herald Plaza to implement.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Free advice for Herald.com
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2 comments:
I've blogged about this a couple of times, but the definitive proof that newspapers would be financially better off making their archives available and ad-supported is close to celebrating its 10th anniversary: St. Huck's essay in suck.com, January 27th 1998
All the pay wall does is piss people off, create ill will, and make people bound and determined NOT to pay. Great thinking, of course.
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