Libraries used to keep archives of old newspapers and publications on microfilm, and anyone who needed to research something could go and look through those archives. The IA holds a similar function today - but it's the only one with its breadth and age. If we lose the IA, we lose a lot of important historical information.
Newspapers very frequently maintain and provide public access to their own online archives now. That's also not a function the IA is even especially good at--its coverage is spotty, and unless you have an old URL, it's very hard to find stuff in the IA.
The one unique thing the IA does is have is a broad and deep collection of internet ephemera.
That's what I was referring to. Blogs especially are an important source of historical information from this period that will not exist in newspaper archives -- and many of those have appeared and disappeared in the last 20 years. IA is the only record we have of much of that.
This is actually the worst way to preserve newspapers. There are two major problems:
1. It's their own content. Sometimes they find old content embarrassing and hide it.
2. Sometimes newspapers shut down. When that happens, the archive disappears! This defeats the whole purpose of archival.
Indeed, but that’s not the definition of “high culture” as proposed a few posts up, so I don’t see how it’s relevant to the thread.