Some weeks back, I bit my thumb on The New York Times' decision to charge for their online content in a near discernible future.
The news is a more viable currency than history, which is why it is mind boggling that news sites like The New York Times chooses to charge readers extra for trying to access their archives and give the fresh items away for free.
Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing analyzes this news/history dichotomy and traces the decision to charge for archives access to a deal with a search service for newsrooms. He also points us to Dan Gillmor who predicts a more radical approach to grassroots journalism: these news services will eventually open up their archives, and will find that it will not only increase traffic, but it will also be more valuable in the long run to charge people for the current news and just give history away for free.
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