Dave Winer has posted an interesting piece on his DaveNet site about website archives. He mentions the BBC and Guardian as both having intact archives of what's appeared on our respective sites over the years - we had a brief exchange earlier today about the Guardian's unique ownership structure.
On the matter of charging for archives, he cites the New York Times as having an archive system that's "good enough". The NYT charges for its archives - except when the reader looks at the archive via an RSS feed (provided in partnership with Winer's company, Userland).
That's well and good, and I suppose the NYT deserves praise for not sticking up the shutters completely. But I'd disagree with his analysis that this is an arrangement other publications might want to follow. For all but a very few publications, charging for archived content will mean many researchers - and readers - look elsewhere when they want to look back. Business titles and academic journals might fare better than generalist newspapers, but even if newspapers can make money from archives, it's not necessarily a good idea to do so.
Charging means a title's heritage - the reputation formed over weeks and years that has readers coming back for more today - is lost behind a credit card form. It opts out (at least partially) of being seen as a source for information it has already gathered, for being consulted on events it may have a unique perspective on. In return for what? The NY Times might argue its archive is "profitable", although such a term is pretty loose and impossible to properly measure without detailed knowledge of how that statement is arrived at. What costs get counted against the archive revenues, for instance? Server costs? Staff costs? The costs of creating the story in the first place?
Besides, it misses the point: news media makes money from getting information (and advertising) out to readers, fast. I've a hunch that, as technology develops, new delivery mechanisms - and systems to add new bells and whistles to what's delivered - will be the things that drive revenues - not archives.
