More on Open Archives

for newspaper websites from Jay Rosen: Will the Greensboro Newspaper Open Its Archive? There is an issue, though, with the analysis. One of the first points made is that open archives are beneficial to newspapers in that they would support a newspaper in becoming an authority, a journal of record. While I believe this is true, I question whether this is a goal for most newspapers.

For the New York Times and the Washington Post perhaps it is - but for the vast majority of the rest of the media firmament, I doubt that their publishers care about this even a little bit. The newspaper business today seems to be about nothing more than protecting local advertising markets.

The sense that a newspaper participates in the democratic exchange of news and opinions about the events of the day seems to be a legacy goal that still plays in the abstract but has little to do with the actual interests of publishers. In that context, the call for open archives seems quite beside the point.