absolute michigan :: all michigan, all the time

Enter Keyword:

Editorial: Detroit Free Press Web Site 'Upgrade'

ABSOLUTE MICHIGAN EDITORIAL
The Detroit Free Press launched a totally revamped web site today. Regardless of what you think of the cosmetic changes, the functional changes are profound. For many years, their online archive of Michigan news and features has been a huge public resource. As of this morning, that resource is gone, with all links from yesterday to years ago returning the dreaded "404 Not Found" message. The Freep's new policy is that stories from the past seven days will be freely available online, with past articles available on a pay-per-story basis from their Archive.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the Free Press or its parent Gannett is under any obligation to provide a free and public archive of past news stories, just lamenting that one of the state's two flagship papers has chosen to go this route (and the fact that roughly 20% of a year's worth of news links has been rendered obsolete).

Visit the new Detroit Free Press web site

Posted/updated Nov 16, 2005
by Andrew McFarlane (Absolute Michigan)