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Note To Online Newspapers: Stop Removing Old Content
from the just-trying-to-help dept
One of the more annoying things with many online versions of newspapers is that they constantly "retire" old content. Different news organizations have different policies, but the sites go away after a certain period of time. That's annoying for sites like ours where we link to those news sources. When we go looking for more information later, our links go to nowhere. So why is this a particularly pointless business practice for newspapers? Newspapers that keep their content online are finding that as much as a third of their traffic is to old stories. That's one-third of your online revenue from ads, and you're just throwing it away. Storage is cheap, so the cost of keeping the content online can't be that high, but the cost of not keeping it online (and at the same link!) seems to be huge.
Reader Comments
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No Subject Given
As a consumer I totally agree as well. Not only is it annoying for users but it makes the newspaper look bad becasue of the non working links.
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wire services
I was told by the Albany Times-Union that the AP wire services REQUIRE their member papers to remove stories from their websites after two weeks.
If this is true, yell at the AP :)
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Re: wire services
I think this has mostly to do with the money they make from selling their archives.
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Re: wire services
Sometimes it's archives, sometimes policy - policy made by off-line clowns that DON'T GET IT!!
Maybe we need a 7 day waiting period to access the internet
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Re: Dumb Practice
I frequent at least one online community that suggests users copy and paste entire articles (including source info) into their forum posts to ensure the future availability of discussion topics.
Yes, in most cases this constitutes a copyright violation but it does keep everything in context and everyone completely informed.
If private bloggers can Permalink their posts, it's a given that huge publishers can, too. Of course, whether the publishers understand the reality and value potentially unlimited ad-revenue over selling access to archived articles remains to be seen.
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The reason..
The reason many newspapers remove older stuff is because they try to charge people for reading it later on. The New York Times is a prime example.
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No Subject Given
This drives me nuts. I was trying to find archived articles of a murder that happened across the street from me years ago and I couldn't find anything about it anywhere, not even searching on the name of the murderer.
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No Subject Given
I'd not really pondered the economic ramifications of archival access. You're right, TD: this is a huge "Duh!" for the newpapers. Good catch.
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Wikinews
I don't believe Wikinews retires old articles. Plus, their news is freely editable and you can't be charged for it! And DRM is agains their document license, too.
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Why couldn't TD just keep a copy
Rather than link to the article on the News site, wouldn't it be fair-use to link AND make a copy of the article. When the link dies, just auto-forward to the copy.
Have I missed the issue somehow?
D
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Re: Why couldn't TD just keep a copy
If we made a copy, we'd be accused of copyright infringement.
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I agree
Come on NYTimes.com, scan in all your editions from 1851 to the present. Who wants to go to the library and look at film?
And get rid of that login thingie also.
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Re: I agree
It's just a matter of time unil the newspaper archives are scanned and indexed. It can't happen immediately for every newspaper in the country. Especially in an industry that has a declining revenue stream.
The New York Times is a business, not a national charity to provide information to everyone. Why not slam movie studios for not putting up all movies they've ever made online so they could be watched for free?
I think newspapers would leave content up forever if there was advertising revenue to support doing so. That is, if they didn't have to rely on it as revenue to offset declining circulation and more expensive newsprint.
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