News is never just about what’s happening today — it’s also about context, including what led up to this moment in time. That’s why lately I’ve been intrigued by the Google News archive search. This feature, introduced in September 2008, is worth a look — and may be worth considering as a way to make more money off your historical archives, or to augment current coverage.
The Official Google Blog explains that this service, which brings “history online, one newspaper at a time,” presents archived news articles online — either as they were printed, preserving original format/context (including, in some cases, surrounding stories), or with a link to a news organization’s paid archives. It also presents a timeline, showing how popular a search term was in news from years past.
For instance, a Google News archive search for space shuttle yields a timeline with significant spikes in 1981 (for the first shuttle mission), 1986 (when the Challenger exploded after launch) and 2003 (when the Columbia broke up on re-entry).
An example of the early shuttle coverage I found here includes this March 24, 1982, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story: “NASA Sees Little Problem with Lost Space Shuttle Tiles.” That’s actually a jump from a Page One story. Other headlines/jumps also appearing on the page include: “Begin to Stay on After Knesset Vote,” “Will Match Missiles with Subs, Soviets Say,” and “Military Coup Ousts Guatemalan Government” — an intriguing glimpse into the tenor of that time.
That Post-Gazette story was available for free — but my search also pointed to several articles for sale from newspaper archives. For instance, The Christian Science Monitor is selling its July 21, 1975 story “Space Shuttle to Involve Europe, Too,” for $3.95.
Not every news organization’s historical archives are available in the Google News archive. Google apparently strikes partnerships with news organizations to scan and serve their archives, or to link to existing online archives.
Participating in this service could be a way to turn your history into traffic. The Official Google Blog noted: “Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we’ll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you’ll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well.” This means that participating news organizations could find their historic content increasingly findable, and thus potentially more compelling and/or lucrative.
What if news organizations routinely pulled in and presented this context for key topics? Ads could be served around that archived content, or fees could be charged to download articles. And online audiences could be engaged through a sense of connection to a rich past.
(Thanks to Tech.Blorge for the tip.)
