Media archives question - how many media companies preserve the history of ads in their publications alongside the articles in their online/digital archives?
-
Media archives question - how many media companies preserve the history of ads in their publications alongside the articles in their online/digital archives?
(Thinking magazines and newspapers)
Do any make them first class digital content or are they only present in archives that are full content scans but not as standalone searches etc?
I would argue that losing print ads is missing context for the history of newspaper and magazine content (along with where the article was and how/if cut
-
For example in newspapers front page/back page and center spread content for various sections often had a distinct character different from articles deeper into a given section of the paper (and similarly for editions of papers with multiple sections the covers of those sections)
In magazines different publications had very different approaches to whether or not they broke up articles and had the end of them deeper in the magazine (often in the back pages) and where/how they inserted ads
-
I would seriously argue that the original mistake of media online was in not treating the ads of their publications as part of the content that should have been migrated to the web alongside their articles. By removing ads (including in many cases from digits archives) publications broke the historic interplay of their content and their advertising. (Knowing that the subject of a piece or their competitors was also a frequent advertiser might inform how that piece is read and understood)
-
And knowing where an article was in the print publication is also or was in many cases a sign of how important the editors considered it and how many people likely read it. “Front page” stories in newspapers were often read - though often only the portion literally on the front page (if the story continued deeper in the issue) and in magazines the stories noted on the cover were considered different from the regular columns. And whether or not a story had a byline differed between publications
-
Aaron Brick — אהרן בריקreplied to Shannon Clark last edited by
@Rycaut I thoroughly agree! But we must acknowledge that digitizing graphical ads is substantially more complex than article text. Also, I wager publishers' licenses to reproduce those ads never provided for any long-term reuse, so there would be legal risks in recirculating them.
-
Shannon Clarkreplied to Aaron Brick — אהרן בריק last edited by
@aarbrk very true. Though I think the publication’s and the copyright issues could have been navigated and resolved - with changes to ad contracts going forward as well as likely agreements plus fair use arguments for the historic archives. (And publications might have been able to monetize old ads via offering to link them to the brand’s current sites)
Of course ads for now out of business brands/companies as well as ads with now offensive content would be issues (old ads are pretty bad often)
-
Aaron Brick — אהרן בריקreplied to Shannon Clark last edited by
@Rycaut IMHO, the old contracts cannot be renegotiated individually. Perhaps new legislation could create a specific copyright exemption. However moral and useful, it would be very expensive to defend mass reuse on Fair Use grounds.
-
Shannon Clarkreplied to Aaron Brick — אהרן בריק last edited by
@aarbrk sure. But archiving and library use/research is a pretty strong and established fair use case. So a mass policy of keeping ads and print context in digital archives of works probably could have been made. Especially if the resulting pages weren’t themselves trying to be monetized with new ads (and especially in the case of ads from businesses that are no longer around/able to easily give permissions). And of course in many cases the older archives are fully in the public domain (pre-1929
-
Aaron Brick — אהרן בריקreplied to Shannon Clark last edited by
@Rycaut Your logic is sound. But for copyright-protected content the threat of possibly defending such cases — just one could bankrupt an archive — can make the proposal hard to invest in. The norm for the really old stuff is to digitize whole pages, which is closer to meeting your call, it just isn't by the same entities that printed them in the first place.
-
Shannon Clarkreplied to Aaron Brick — אהרן בריק last edited by
@aarbrk indeed. My thought exercise is more of an alternative history of media than a serious proposal (without some major shift in either copyright laws or the market) More of - had the early newspapers and magazines onljne taken a more inclusive approach I think we may have ended up with a very different online media experience.
Archival ads would have always been a challenge - but it might have meant that all print ads were also part of the onljne experience so content linked not “targeted”