John Rogers: From Net 54 to Prison

[SAllen2556]

Originally Posted by thecatspajamas

Not the main point of this thread I know, but for what it's worth, Mary Brace hardly went for the quick buck when it came to the Burke/Brace collection. She operated the business of making prints from the negatives for years as her father's health declined, and continued for a decade after his passing. Without knowing the particulars of the deal with Rogers, I believe the big selling point for her was the promise of a return of digital scans of the negatives from which she could continue to supply prints to players and their families and fans. She could have easily turned the whole thing over to an auction house to part out and maximize her return, but in the end, she took the deal that would (she thought) best enable her to carry on the family business without the labor-intensive handling of the physical negatives.

In the interview below, she alludes to a website that was supposed to have been set up for the Burke/Brace archive that would have all of the digitized photos available, similar to what Rogers had done with the Conlon archive.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-14...miumvideo.html

I don't think she went for the quick buck at all, but perhaps let her desire to have the digitized archive override her business savvy. At the time, with Rogers having done similar deals with multiple newspapers to digitize their archives, having the Conlon website up and running, and by all appearances having the financial and physical ability to pull off what he was proposing, I don't think Mary had any real reason to question the deal that Rogers was offering. In hindsight, even in the quotes in the previous linked articles, she seemed to be lamenting the break-up and loss of the image archive more than the lack of restitution.

Yes, I can only imagine the degree of her lament. Thanks Lance, that certainly answers the question!