I think there is a high likelihood that we will continue to see this as long as there are those like John Rogers out there helping them to realize what they have and help them to liquidate that physical asset. I would guess that in most cases, newspapers only re-use a very small percentage of the photos that they are storing (at their expense) in their physical archives, and what Rogers does is basically work out a deal where the photos are all scanned and returned to the paper in a usable digital archive, Rogers keeps the physical photographs, AND pays the newspaper some lump sum for all this. Most papers that he has approached, or at least those on shaky financial footing, seem to have taken this as a win/win situation for the paper. I can't recall specifically if he was involved in the Chicago Tribune deal, but the last time I checked, the list of papers he had worked out deals with was I think somewhere around 10-12 that I could find info on, amounting to MILLIONS of physical photographs.
You can do some searching and read up on how he's going about it, but I for one was very impressed with the scale of his operation. He really seems to have all the kinks worked out, and I would guess that as long as there are cash-strapped nespapers sitting on physical photo archives, he'll be the go-to guy for converting those into something more usable by the papers.
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