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Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History
UNCW Library, Discovery Hall, 2nd floor
5162 Randall Dr.
Wilmington, NC 28403
csencah@uncw.edu
910-962-7810
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Location
The Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History is located on the 2nd floor of Discovery Hall in the UNCW Library.
Hours
The Center is open for research visits Monday-Friday from 10am to 2pm, except for UNCW holidays and breaks. Visit our website to view upcoming closures.
Access Policies
Prior to visiting the Center, users should familiarize themselves with our access and use policies.
Understanding the Newspaper Publishing Process
In the 18th and early 19th century, most U.S. newspapers were published weekly at most. These papers largely contained locally-focused articles and information, supplemented by updates on major national events that might be reported secondhand from people traveling throughout the country. News tended to be shared slowly, sometimes weeks or months after an event had already happened.
This began to change with the introduction and expansion of telegraphy in the 1840s and 1850s, which provided quicker access to news stories from around the country and globe. Very large newspapers might have their own telegraph cable, but most newspapers chose to subscribe to a press service, such as the Associated Press, to receive news stories in a timely manner. Increased access to news led to newspapers being published daily or several times a a week. Some papers even published two issues a day: a morning and evening edition.
Because newspaper reporters and editors were often rushed to meet a tight deadline, historical newspapers often contain a lot of mistakes, ranging from typos and misspellings to serious factual errors in an accounting of an event. It is important to keep in mind that historical newspapers are also products of existing social and political power structures of their time; many papers were (subtly or overtly) aligned to a particular political party or social group, and this affected the kinds of news stories that were reported in their pages. It is always important to consider issues of bias and accuracy when using newspapers as historical evidence.
Also keep in mind that newspapers are, first and foremost, businesses designed to turn a profit. Sales from print subscriptions generally comprise only a small portion of a newspaper's profits. Most of the money made from running a newspaper comes from selling advertisements. It was important for a newspaper to appeal to local business owners and wealthy elites who would pay for advertising space. This can also contribute to a newspaper's inherent bias.
Newspaper formats
Historical newspapers survive in three formats:
Microforms: This is the most commonly held format in which newspapers can be found in libraries and archives. In libraries, print issues of newspapers have generally been photographed and transferred as thumbnail images to a transparent microform medium, such as microfilm (long reels of several images in succession) or microfiche (flat cards containing about a dozen images of individual pages) in order to facilitate access. Microforms are much easier to preserve, store, and reproduce than printed newspapers, and they are more resistant to fire and water damage than newsprint, so print issues are often discarded by libraries after they are filmed.
Digital collections: The second most common format in which you might encounter newspapers is in digital collections or databases. Newspapers might be digitized directly from the print issues themselves or (more commonly, when available) the microfilm edition. Newspaper digitization takes a lot of time and resources, and many newspaper issues are still in copyright, so it is not always possible to find a full run of a particular title online.
Print issues: Because newsprint is inherently unstable, and newspapers themselves are large and bulky, original print issues are difficult to preserve and store. This means that it is becoming increasingly hard to find accessible print issues of historical newspapers in libraries and archives.
Conducting research with historical newspapers
Newspapers are excellent resources for researching historical people and events. In some cases, obituaries, marriage announcements, or other notices published in local newspapers may represent the only surviving documentation of an individual who is not otherwise noteworthy or famous. Similarly, newspapers are often the only sources of speech transcripts, photographs of events, advertisements, and other valuable pieces of historical evidence.
Historical newspapers are accessible to researchers in a variety of formats (see the Newspaper Formats box on this page). While access to digitized newspapers is becoming increasingly common, you should keep in mind that only a small percentage of historical newspaper titles is available online. Many titles (especially those published since 1925) are still in copyright, which makes them harder to find in digital collections. Many newspaper databases are restricted to certain users or only accessible by paying a fee. Even when newspapers are digitized, effectively searching them can be difficult. Newspapers that are full-text searchable are usually transcribed by optical character recognition (OCR), which involves a computer "reading" an image of a newspaper page and attempting to convert it into a searchable body of text. Poor quality images, typos, or faint type can greatly impact the quality of an OCR transcript, meaning keywords can often get missed. You should be prepared to read the pages yourself to look for information if a keyword search is not effective. Also remember that historical newspapers often use colloquialisms, jargon, and terminology common at the time they were printed. Black populations might be referenced with terms like "negro" or "colored." Very small papers might refer to people, places, or businesses with nicknames or by first name only (this is especially common in historical student newspapers). All of these things can hinder a keyword search.
This image shows a poor quality copy of a newspaper page. Take note of the mistakes in the machine-generated transcript of the image.
If a newspaper can't be found online, a print or microfilm copy may exist in a library somewhere. Libraries tend to collect newspapers published in their immediate geographic region, and larger university libraries may also have access to historical issues of major titles. Sometimes libraries will create indexes or clippings files that can facilitate research with undigitized newspapers. If not, you may need to manually search through numerous issues to find the information you're looking for. Historical newspapers tend to be very text-heavy and use very few images, so efficient skimming for relevant details is key.
When analyzing a newspaper, in addition to considering things like bias, tone, and historical context, you should also consider how the information is laid out on the page. How is the paper grabbing the reader's attention? What kinds of content appear on the front page versus internal pages? Are authors identified? How much of the information is coming from a press service, and how much was contributed by the newspaper's staff themselves? How are advertisements placed? Do certain ads have higher visibility because they're placed close to a headline or photo? These things may indicate a newspaper's bias.
Anatomy of a newspaper
- Nameplate: The nameplate (sometimes also referred to as the flag or the masthead) runs at the top of the front page of the newspaper. A simplified nameplate also appears on every internal page. Nameplates usually provide the paper's title, the date of the issue, the volume and issue number (if used), the city or town in which the paper is published, and sometimes the name of the publisher (for smaller papers). If the paper has a motto guiding its work, that may also appear in the nameplate. Internal pages will include page numbers in one of the top corners.
- Headline: The title of a newspaper article, usually designed to grab the reader's attention (especially on the front page).
- Sub headline: Located underneath a headline. Provides additional information to contextualize the headline.
- Dateline: Tells readers where the article originated, especially if a story has come from out of town.
- Byline: Identifies the author of an article (often a national press service).
- Jump Line: Many newspaper articles are too long to fit into a single column on a page. In order to adequately distribute space and provide valuable real estate to a variety of articles, publishers will generally run the first portion of an article on one page and then continue it on another. The jump line directs the reader to the page where a story continues, usually identified with an abbreviated title.
- Photo caption: Photos may or may not appear with captions. Historical photo captions generally describe what the photo is depicting, but rarely credit a photographer.
- Masthead (pictured below): The masthead (sometimes also referred to as the publisher's box) contains information about the paper itself, usually including the name(s) of the editor and other staff, subscription rates, contact information, advertising rates, etc. The masthead often appears on the editorials page or another interior page.
Common sections of a historical newspaper:
- Front page: Contains the most "newsworthy" stories - generally a combination of local and national news.
- Local news: Historical newspapers, especially prior to the 20th century, often ran local news alongside national and international news throughout the paper. Sometimes local news will be organized into its own section, especially if a paper serves more than one county or municipality.
- Social and personal news: Historical newspapers frequently report on hyper-local topics, such as families with out of town visitors, residents going on vacation, proposals and marriages, deaths, etc. These news items usually appear together in one section, called something like "Around Town," "Society News," "Socials," etc. In white-owned newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries, updates related to a town's Black population may be grouped together in a separate subsection, often on a different page.
- Editorials: This section of the paper contains pieces written by the newspaper's staff. The pieces in this section share the author's personal opinions on a newsworthy trend or event, and you will sometimes see this section referred to as "Opinions" or "Op-Ed." For smaller papers, these pieces were usually written by the editor themselves, while larger papers with multiple editorial staff might feature editorials by several different people. Editorials usually don't reference the author by name, but you may be able to identify an author based on the staff names listed in the masthead. This section may also include "letters to the editor" written by community members who want to share their opinions on the newspaper's content or current events.
- Advertisements/Classifieds: Like today, historical newspapers financed themselves primarily by selling advertising space. Early newspapers generally have ads peppered throughout the interior pages of the paper, largely consisting of postings from people seeking to hire someone for something, wanting to buy or sell a piece of equipment, offering a service, or looking for information about something. Later papers will usually organize these kinds of personal inquiries into a "Classified" section separate from the larger advertisements.
- Business/financial news: Historically, a standalone financial news section is more common for larger papers or papers located in cities with business districts.
- Cartoons: Historical newspapers often include illustrated cartoons, and generally these cartoons will offer some sort of commentary or critique on a popular political or social issue of the time. You will often notice an increase in cartoons during the time leading up to an election.
How to locate historical newspapers
National Newspaper Directories and Databases
Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries: This database, provided by the Library of Congress, is a searchable index of newspapers published in the United States since 1690. This directory can help identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them. Note that not all newspapers included in the directory are accessible online.
Rowell's American Newspaper Directory and N.W. Ayer & Son's Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals: These two directories, published by George Presbury Rowell and N.W. Ayer respectively, provide a comprehensive listing of American newspapers and periodicals, published from 1869 to 1973. Rowell's directory was published first and was ultimately subsumed by Ayer's in 1910. Online availability of these directories is scattered.
- Digitally accessible volumes of Geo. P. Rowell and Co.'s American Newspaper Directory, 1869-1909
- Digitally accessible volumes of N.W. Ayer and Son's American Newspaper Annual and Directory, 1880-1925
- Print and microfilm editions of these titles are available, including years have not yet been digitized. For information about accessing these directories in print or microfilm format, see the Library of Congress website.
African-American newspapers and periodicals : a national bibliography: The authentic voice of African-American culture is captured in this first comprehensive guide to a treasure trove of writings by and for a people, as found in sources in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. This bibliography contains over 6,000 entries. Note that this title is not available online or in UNCW Library's collections, but may be requested via Interlibrary Loan.
Newspaper databases available via UNCW Library: UNCW Library provides access to approximately 75 databases that provide access to newspapers, both current and historical, that have been published throughout the United States (including North Carolina titles) and globally. Note that most of these databases may only be access with a UNCW username and password or from a campus WiFi network.
North Carolina Newspaper Directories and Databases
For more information on locating newspapers published in North Carolina, with a special emphasis on the Southeast North Carolina region, see the Local Newspapers section of the Center's Guide to Researching Southeast North Carolina History.