Locking up the past at Vancouver Courier

While showing a German documentary film crew around our fair city, I explained to them that three of the four daily newspapers available were owned by the same company, not to mention some of the mini-tabs. They were astonished that this was permitted. This kind of media monopolization isn't allowed in other countries.

I was reminded of this when I tried to show a friend an article I had published in the Vancouver Courier a year or two ago. (Disclosure: I still freelance for them.) I visited the Vancouver Courier's site for the first time in a while and found it had been folded into the Canada.com megasite.

The Courier's new archives only go back 90 days. The Courier used to have articles online going back years, which were therefore visible to search engines, serving the general public as a valuable resource. (Not to mention pumping up my Google hits.)

Instead, if you want to search more than three months in the past, you have to go to the FP Infomart site, which charges $4.95 per article downloaded. Why can't archives be ad-supported like the rest of the news content? Those fees are fine if you're a corporate research firm and you can write it off as an expense, but what if you're a student or blogger or non-profit or other researcher without money to burn?

As the Vancouver Public Library's site is still down for the strike, I can't see if the Courier's articles are still being archived on publicly accessible databases where people with library cards can give them . Hopefully, they will still be accessible. It's increasingly important that libraries fight for the right to make information accessible to all, not just those who can afford it.