Rogers Photo Archives Helps Newspapers Preserve History and Generate Revenue

By: Nu Yang

As print makes way for digital, more newspapers are searching for ways to preserve their photo archives. Rogers Photo Archives not only provides a solution for digitalizing photos, it also helps papers create revenue.

For The Detroit News, which had nearly 800,000 prints dating from the late 1800s to the 1980s stored in drawers, Rogers Photo Archives was just want they needed.

“We used to go up to the fourth-floor library, search through the alphabetized files, find the photo, scan it, and then input the caption,” said Bob Houlihan, director of photography. “It wasn’t easy. It involved a lot of sneezing from the dust.”

Based in North Little Rock, Ark., Rogers Photo Archives is the largest privately owned collection of photographic images. Owner John Rogers’ interest in vintage sports photography branched off into the photo archives of daily newspapers in 2008.

Rogers’ services include photograph transportation; photo restoration, including removal of editing marks; scanning; creating a digitized database by applying metadata such as dates, titles, descriptions, captions, photographers, and news service; and a hard drive complete with all images.

Now with just a few keystrokes, Houlihan is able to find a photo without a single sneeze.

In return, Rogers acquires all the photographs and receives shared rights to the images. Currently, he has developed an archive of more than 40 million images, which he owns and leases to the media for use. A separate business, PlanetGiant, markets popular photo images as posters, wall murals, and laptop skins.

According to Rogers, the newspapers also get a share of the profit. “We try to generate as much revenue through the shared rights program,” he said. Rogers estimates he will make $11 million in gross revenues this year from photo sales.

“As ad dollars get harder to come by, the archives as an online product have increased in sales,” Houlihan said. “The commercial sales have been very lucrative.”

In addition to The Detroit News, Rogers has purchased the full photo archives of the Boston Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, The Denver Post, St. Petersburg Times, The Seattle Times, Sporting News magazine, and SPORT magazine. Rogers is also interested in acquiring images from international papers. In some cases, he has written seven-figure checks to acquire the photos.

“In the beginning, papers were more motivated by the cash than the digitalizing,” Rogers said. “Now they are motivated by the services offered.”

For more information, visit JohnRogersArchive.com.