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Research Guides

HSTAA 231: Race & American History: Primary Sources: News & Magazines

  Examples of news coverage of Till murder & trial

Finding Newspaper Articles

Start your research for newspaper articles written during the period you are researching with Proquest Historical Newspapers -- this is a collection of 15 newspapers (some of which are linked below) such as the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and more.

Finding Magazine Articles

The following list includes both indexes to magazines (helps you identify citations to specific articles written on a topic within a group of magazines but does not include the fulltext), collections of magazines (some complete fulltext, others a mixture of fulltext and citations), and single digitized magazines. 

Browse printed magazines such as Newsweek on the on the fourth floor of Suzzallo Library under the AP2 call number area. 

Newspapers & Magazines as Historical Evidence

Strengths

  • Newspapers focus more on local or national issues and events rather than foreign countries. Magazines tend to be more national in scope -- news magazines (such as Time) and politically oriented magazines (such as The New Republic) cover everything from politics to wars while specialized magazines provide insight into cultural issues and material culture and cover sports, entertainment, fashion and more
  • Commentary, cartoons and letters to the editor provide public opinion information
  • Photographs and other graphics
  • Advertising included in magazines are useful primary sources especially for the study of consumerism, gender roles, material culture, history of technology, and popular culture. Display and classified newspaper advertisements provide Information about local prices, rents, jobs, etc. 
 

Keep in mind

  • Newspapers & magazines usually do not provide in-depth analysis nor do they provide scholarly context for an issue. They really do focus on the who, what, where and when rather than the why of an issue or event.
 

For more information on using newspapers see: Analyzing NewspapersNewspapers & Learning to Do Historical Research Prowling the Periodicals.