SI's complete story archive going online

According to this, every word SI's ever published will be available in this new online feature its starting. Wow. I'll be spending way, way, way too much time there. It will be available starting on Thursday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/business/media/17mags.html?dpc

 

That is incredible. I can't believe this is going to be free, though I'm extremely happy about it. What a resource "The Vault" will be.

 

Especially if there is a "Gary Smith" keywordable search.

dw

 

The search part of it should be tremendous. I can't wait to read all of the old stuff from Jenkins, DeFord, Kram, Curry Kirkpatrick's college hoops, etc. I saw another story somewhere that said stories post-1995 might not be completely available yet, because of issues with photo rights. I couldn't tell if it was the stories, or just the photos from that time that would be affected.

 

They were promising this for awhile on CD-Rom, back when people actually still used that stuff. It never happened.

I can't wait. This will be incredible. It will be a nice reminder of how good the magazine used to be.

 

This is just terrific. Thanks for posting. I think one of the first stories I'll go back and read is Deford's piece about Little Irvy, the two-ton traveling whale. I know that's not nearly his best, but for some reason it just popped into my head.

 

Hmm.

There are some very memorable SI stories from my youth that I'd love to read again. This would be awesome.

 

That's exactly what I said when I read the link.

 

It seems likely SI hopes that any readers attracted by these archives will not be free readers for long -- that they will be drawn in for subscriptions, as well as just for the all-important web clicks, eyeballs, search lists, and, of course, potential ad sales, etc., based on those numbers.

This also has to qualify as yet another attempt to reach the coveted younger audience, perhaps even the much-younger readers, who have probably never even read any of SI's older stories or magazine issues that we remember and value so much.

And those kids are not about to go to a library, for a hard copy of anything.

Or pay for online access to it, either.

We need to change (and charge) before they will.

 

I'll definitely be spending way too much time on that site. I'm wondering how quickly issues will be archived and if it pays to subscribe to the magazine anymore.