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Newspapers as Primary Sources

Person holding a copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer goes web-only.

The rise of online news has caused a dramatic decline in print newspapers - readership and availability.  Philip Meyer writes that "Weekday circulation of newspapers in the USA fell in 2007 to 50.7 million, its lowest point since 1945....And the number of daily newspapers continued to fall at a steady rate: an average net loss of twelve mastheads per year since 1971."  Newspapers have tried a variety of cost-saving strategies including stopping home delivery, decreasing the number of days published, publishing only online editions (such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer), and others have ceased. 

Help: Analyzing Newspapers

*Dooley, P. (2009). History of journalism: 1995 to present. In C. H. Sterling (Ed.), Encyclopedia of journalism (Vol. 2, pp. 713-717).

Meyer, P. (2009). The vanishing newspaper: saving journalism in the information age."

Best Bets: News Databases

Search for articles about your topic published in newspapers around the world using these databases:

Help finding newspapers in the UW Libraries

  • Search our Microforms & Newspapers Collection database to see which newspapers we hold in print and on microfilm. 
  • Use UW Libraries Search to locate newspapers (online or on microform) by title or place of publication. Type in the place AND newspaper. For example:  Seattle AND newspaper. On the results screen choose the Resource Type "Journals" from the left toolbar.
  • Use the databases on this page for news stories published about your topic. 

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