Times plans to open parts of 200-year-old archive

The Times has plans to open up parts of its 200-year-old archive, Times Media's digital publisher Zach Leonard told the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) conference, in London, yesterday.

Mr Leonard said the Times was looking at ways to make use of the newspaper's archive and turn it into a revenue steam.

He later told Journalism.co.uk that Timesonline would first look to experiment with subscription-based offerings to the business community before turning its attention to the consumer market.

Mr Leonard said the plans were still in development but that the service could be taken to market by a third party provider online or even through mobile phone operators.

"Coming to areas like the law we have a tremendous legal archive, which to a certain audience is incredibly valuable and they have the ability - as a business audience - to pay and they are comfortable with that kind of thing, a business based subscription," said Mr Leonard.

As an example of where a paid for service could work for the consumer market Mr Leonard told the conference that the Times' archive contained, amongst other things, book reviews written by important literary figures, which he believed could have unique value to a specific section of the digital readership.

He told Journalism.co.uk: "I think at the consumer end, where you think about the depth of content across things like books, we can really go back in history and look at some really rich content around that, that may well be an interesting area to pursue.

"If you can then couple that with an exclusive interview with the Booker Prize winner, when that gets announced, it all of a sudden becomes an interesting thing."


You can read an extended version of Zach Leonard’s talk with Journalism.co.uk here.

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