Newspaper archives as a regional memory bank

A Finnish journalist Matti Lintulahti has started a blog (via). He writes (in Finnish) on how the free on-line archives of newspapers can work as a revenue source but also on how they can be an important source of regional memories. In his column he hopes that Finnish newspapers would open up their archives, if even at a delay of a few days.

I’ve been disappointed by how most Finnish news sources present their content on the web. Feeds are a thing to dream of, and most content is hidden behind subscriptions. Our local newspaper, Karjalainen, offers some of its content for free – something I’ve used earlier as a source when I’ve discussed happening in our neck of the woods. However, the archives are far from having all of the content on-line, but at least it’s a start.

And by the way, I recommend following Lintulahti’s blog if Finnish is your thing.