Newspaper sites: archives, paywalls and what survives

Newspaper websites are among the most valuable resources in this directory and among the most frustrating to use, for reasons that are mostly commercial rather than editorial.

The archive is usually the best thing a newspaper site has and the hardest part to reach. Many hold decades of local reporting that exists nowhere else, indexed badly or not at all, and sitting behind a paywall or a search function that only covers recent years. For local history, genealogy or anything specific to a place, it is worth learning how a given paper's archive works rather than relying on a general search engine.

Paywall models vary in ways worth knowing: some meter by article, some by section, some allow search engine referrals through and some do not. None of this is usually documented.

The wider point is about sourcing. Local newspapers do a large share of the original reporting that national outlets and aggregators then repeat. Reading the paper closest to the story is generally the best way to get the detail that was lost in the retelling.