What is the Value of Your Information Archives?

So just what is the value of old content? Back in the day, we called content that had an immediate shelf-life perishable, while content that could endure was called evergreen. It's hard to get anyone to agree on the value of content archives, and indeed ROI models essentially don't work because the value is in the eye of both the holder -- and the audience.

Are the Wall Street Journal's archives important? The Journal makes its money selling immediate news to an audience that demands instantaneous. That doesn't denigrate the value of the archive -- but the primary value to readers is immediate, up-to-the-minute, highly specialized financial information. Conversely, general news sites have it a bit tougher since general news is seen more as a commodity; available for free from multiple sources. For these sites, the archive actually gains more value over time, particularly if it becomes a means of driving traffic to the site, as Dorian Benkoil writes (and concurred by virtually every SEO specialist) for the Poynter Institute's E-Media Tidbits column.

Benkoil's Poynter compatriot Michelle Minkoff finds another use for "old" content: providing historical, primary source content to commemorate anniversaries. In the ongoing saga of historical revisionism, Minkoff sees a value in being able to dust off the annals and touts The Spokesman-Review of Spokan, Wash., for how it handled the 30-year anniversary of the eruption of St. Helens. Coverage included an interview of photojournalist Christopher Anderson as he described the picture that landed on virtually every newspaper. Additionally, Anderson took his lenses back to the same vantage point -- showing us what it looks three decades later.

Historical retrospectives work for virtually any industry on any topic. People want to know what "was'' the day/year they were born. For my father's 75th birthday I gave a bound keepsake edition of The New York Times. We all got a kick out of the cost of men's suits (two pairs of pants, one jacket!), Singer sewing machines and farm equipment. A business that assembles a slide show of then and now may find that it becomes a viral success -- driving traffic and stickiness.

For fee, for free, for traffic, for loyalty, the best way to determine the value of your archives -- is by getting it out there -- and see if your audience responds.

Newsweek (Finally) Wants to Embrace the Web -- But is it Too Late?

I can't sum up my feelings when I heard Jon Meacham tell Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, that Newsweek needs to "fully embrace the Internet." However I can describe my reactions: rolled my eyes, shook my head, and muttered, "about (effing) time." Really, I don't have anything against Jon Meacham, (and he is really smart) but I do have an issue with really smart people having had their head in the sand for the past 15 years, and not having "fully embraced" the Internet.

Stewart and Meacham hailed the importance of Journalism -- and lamented the subsequent lack of business model that supports the gathering of general news. Meacham "speculated" that Newsweek had it backwards -- where you are solely focused on the digital -- and then spin up a magazine! Yes!! Yes!! By gotcha he got it. Why this wasn't obvious 10 years ago, or even 3, when WaPo's management wrote this memo, outlining The 10 Web Principles, is beyond me.

Well, it isn't a mystery really. Writers have been skeptical of the Web for all the wrong reasons, putting more value in having something in print than in pixels. The reality is, and trust me, I have tested this on a whole bunch of journos and it is like light dawn's on marble head, news on the Web (and the corresponding byline) will be consumed by more people than in print. And for some reason that matters to journos - which is the reason you find Meacham on broadcast, writing books or even Twittering. They want their names out there; they want to know they are an influencer.

So while wanting to embrace the Web is a good thing albeit a bit overdue, sadly Meacham and Co will  find  that the work flow has been honed and hewn over the past 77 years to be a print-first paradigm -- and to shift Web-first is going to be ghastly difficult because the entire infrastructure needs to be ripped out. This is not an intractable situation -- but it is a problem, because it will require a capital budget expense -- which is hard to justify when the company is on the block.

I hope for the sake of investigative journalism, for balanced journalism, for war coverage and domestic issues coverage, Newsweek can sort it out. It's not too late yet, but it the clock is chiming.