New York Times Archive
Dave Wilton, Friday, September 21, 2007
With the New York Times ending their disastrous “TimesSelect” online service (that charged people for “premium” content, the equivalent of which was given away for free by every other newspaper in the country), the entire archive of New York Times articles, dating back to 1851, is now available for free to everyone. Simply go to www.nytimes.com and do a search.
The archive is broken into two sections: articles since 1981 and articles published between 1851 and 1981. The older articles are delivered as PDF documents. Unfortunately, they’re not full text searchable once downloaded, so locating the exact word or phrase your looking for in the article can be a challenge. But for a free service, this is a minor annoyance.
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Copyright 1997-2007, by David Wilton
Copyright 1997-2007, by David Wilton
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There seems to be a problem in the implementation. Some articles I was able to view for free, but others I was asked to pay for. All the ones I attempted to look at were from the pre-1980 archive.
Looking further at the nytimes.com site, I found this:
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# The New York Times Archive will be available free of charge for articles from 1987-Present and from 1851-1922, for all readers.
# Articles from 1923-1986 are in our paid Archive and will be available for purchase to non-print subscribers as follows:
* Single articles for $3.95
* Article packs (10) for $15.95. The 10-packs must be used within 30 days, but the articles are available to view indefinitely.
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I confess I don’t see the logic there. Why charge for articles from 1923-1986, but not from before or after that period?
I am trying to get a copy of one of the articles you must pay for called “How Yale Selected her First Coeds; the great admissions sweepstakes “ by Jonathan Lear published in April, 1969. Does anyone have access to a copy? I was interviewed for the article way back when, and I have been trying to view it for years.
Marianna
"…so locating the exact word or phrase your looking for…”
Ouch.