[dylan604]

The oldest news station in my city has partnered with a local college to house their archives going all the way back to when their content was gathered on black&white film. IIRC, using the footage is free (with proper attribution), but you have to pay for the media you choose to receive. The last time I looked, this was pre-digital play out systems, so we're talking video tape costs plus a fee to cover equipment/VTR type use. Not sure what they do now if you just want a digital file.

I'm pretty sure similar was done for the newspaper. However, the oldest paper was bought and killed decades ago, so not sure what happened there.

While not as convenient as a live website, most news sources will have an actual physical archive that you can access with some real intent.

[kccqzy]

On AWS, S3 has a downloader-pay option since basically forever. Maybe a non-technical user would be baffled by this, but a HN user won’t have trouble paying for the download using their existing AWS account. This would be a fine solution if the cost of distribution is the only concern, without considering royalty for copyright.

[dylan604]

Most places (all??) aren't going to be doing AWS->AWS transfers like that. They'll have a web portal with you can use a payment option that ultimately generates an expiring authorized URL.