This month, the N.Y. Times closed a door on its archives that many bloggers, including myself, used to point to articles past the 7 days the N.Y. Times allows for open access to articles. Now those links point to an archive summary of the story.
Dave Winer says the Times should have given more warning or allowed all previous links to remain open. He also bemoans the loss of a newspaper of record for the Web.
It’s inconvenient, but the Times had the right to close its door. If regular Web readers did not have special access, why should blog readers?
Reuters, another source of news items for bloggers and others, plans to cut the material it gives to organizations such as Yahoo! and CBS MarketWatch, according to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal. (Link works only for paid subscribers.) Reuters’ plan is to offer more its content through subscriptions.
News organizations have wanted to charge for access to their archives and premium content for awhile after it became obvious that advertising revenue alone would not cover the costs. They have increased registration requirements on their sites to boost their appeal to advertisers.
But will readers pay? The belief is most will not. How many other local papers or regional organizations could reach the almost 700,000 online subscribers that the Wall Street Journal has?