Poynter.org has posted a story about John Rogers, a Little Rock, Arkansas collector who has been paying large sums of money to several U.S. newspapers for various rights to their photo archives. Rogers generally takes possession of the physical prints and film and sometimes purchases copyright, or shared copyright. Apparently in all cases he scans the photos, captures and appends all available metadata, including handwritten notations, and provides the papers with digital versions of their photo archives. 

Included in Rogers's collection, which now comprises about 35 million photographs, are parts or all of the photo archives of  The Detroit Free Press, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Denver Post, and several other large U.S. daily newspapers.