Newspaper Research Academy

The Newspaper Research Academy grew out of my interest – some might even call it an obsession – in newspaper research for my personal genealogy. Back in 2003, when I first started this journey, my focus quickly shifted beyond just finding names and dates. What I truly wanted was to discover the lives of my ancestors. With only a handful of older relatives who held just bits and pieces of family stories, it was newspapers, with all their vibrant accounts, that intrigued me. So, newspaper research and developing specific techniques to navigate it quickly became a core part of what I offered on The Ancestor Hunt website, which I launched in 2012.

Now, with The Newspaper Research Academy, my mission is pretty simple: I want to share the tools and techniques I’ve learned with you. My goal is to empower everyone, whether you’re a genealogist eager to uncover those precious ancestor stories or a historian looking for deeper insights into events and people, to truly master newspaper research.

You’ll find the Academy structured into three main areas, designed to help you wherever you are on your research path:

  • Free Resources: This is where you’ll find a treasure trove of websites, tutorials, quick reference guides, and other valuable tools. I’ve gathered fantastic resources from others, including various newspaper databases and fellow professionals who create incredibly useful articles, instructional videos, and guides.
  • Subscription Resources: If you’re ready for a deeper dive, the Subscription option in the Academy unlocks exclusive On-Demand Webinars and comprehensive Research Guides, all created specifically by The Ancestor Hunt. I guarantee that if you use the techniques available to Subscribers that you will significantly improve your research results. Plus, you get an ad-free experience on all of The Ancestor Hunt pages.
  • Premium Resources: For those looking for even more specialized content, this section highlights top-tier resources like books, advanced research guides, courses, and webinars offered by leading newspaper database vendors and other expert genealogy professionals.

Caution: This is a very long webpage because there are a lot of resources of all types

The list of resources is not static – it will continue to grow over time

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Below is a list of all the resources that are available from the Newspaper Research Academy. The Free Resources have live links. The Premium Resources also have links to detailed descriptions and purchase information.

The Subscription resources are also listed. If you should decide to subscribe, this will unlock all of the resources available, which at this time number 40 items. The Subscription-only resources will be on separate pages, which are only accessible to Subscribers. Subscribers not only receive access to Research Guides and On-Demand Webinars, but also receive an ad-free experience on the entire The Ancestor Hunt website.

Newspaper Research Subscription Resources

Research Guides

(Click on the + sign to view the description of the Guide)

Obits are important because their content is so valuable to genealogists. They contain a mini-family tree of the person, in addition to information about what the deceased accomplished in their life. This Research Guide presents several techniques to find obituaries in newspaper databases, indexes, clipping scrapbooks, and other types of collections.
This Research Guide presents 40 distinct online techniques that will significantly enhance your ability to find more newspaper articles. There are Searching and Browsing basics, and Tools, Techniques, and Tips.
Using nicknames as well as formal given names will produce a considerable percentage of added research results. This Research Guide provides over 1,000 nicknames and their corresponding formal given names in 13 languages.
In newspapers, you are likely to find abbreviations of given or first names, as well as other types of words, including titles and geographical terms. Abbreviations were heavily used in old newspapers to save space. It is the best technique to boost the number of pertinent search results. In this Research Guide, you will find over 1,500 abbreviations in 13 languages.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) does its best to convert minute black dots in generally poor quality old newspapers to letters and words. One can overcome this by deliberately misspelling words. This is done by swapping letters in the OCR’s index for letters of similar shapes in your search criteria. This Research Guide provides a list of over 100 letter pairs.
This Research Guide presents all the details that you should capture in a log as you are searching online. There is a downloadable PDF and an Excel spreadsheet with detailed descriptions of the fields that you can use.
If you are searching newspapers before 1963, and your search criteria includes a U.S. state, you need to use “old” abbreviations rather than the current two-digit code. This Research Guide presents the old abbreviations for each state..
Just searching for surnames or full names will not find as many articles that are available. You need to conduct what I call “Combination Searches”. Consider including a property or legal term with the surname to achieve more results. This Research Guide presents 160 property and legal terms (e.g., deed, probate, etc.) to include in the search.
Hyphenated words were primarily used to save space by inserting a hyphen at the end of a line. They were also used frequently for words like “mother-in-law”. Fortunately, the “in-word” hyphens have mostly disappeared over time. Both styles of hyphen use exist in old newspapers – a lot. We need to be aware of this and customize our searches to consider hyphens. This Research Guide presents some pointers regarding using hyphenated words in your searches.
Are you trying to find an obituary for an ancestor and having difficulty? Try using an obituary word (e.g., beloved, loving, funeral, etc.) with the surname to direct the search results to an obituary. This Research Guide presents 90 “obituary words” to use in your search criteria.
To succeed at newspaper research, you must search in the right location, and you must search in the appropriate date range. You must know where to find the titles to match the correct locations and date ranges. This is true in searching both free databases and subscription databases. This Research Guide will provide the URLs for 20 of the largest newspaper databases available in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, and the UK.
The “news of the day,” in which articles are published discussing the latest events in the geographical area that the newspaper title covers, is what people think most about when discussing what is in a newspaper. Of course, those articles are extremely useful to any researcher. However, there is so much more in a typical newspaper. This Research Guide discusses over 50 different types of articles that are extremely important.
The capabilities of newspaper database software, independent of the size and quality of their scanned collections, break down into two parts: How do you search the site and find “stuff”; and, how do you download and save the articles that you find? This Research Guide is all about the second part – how do you download and save articles, so that you capture the article in the proper format, and capture the source citation.
This Research Guide discusses the different characteristics you should consider when choosing to purchase a paid newspaper database subscription. It’s not all about how much it costs.
The Vitals section of the newspaper is the most pursued by genealogy newspaper researchers, primarily because that is where death notices and obituaries reside. But there are more than just obits in this important section. This Research Guide discusses the keys to getting the most for your family history research out of the Vitals Section and how to analyze the content of the articles that you find.
Finding information and articles in newspapers about your ancestors is incredibly rewarding. And the amount of information about your ancestors in old newspapers is likely more than we can ever find. If you are not careful, you can make assumptions about what is in ink on the newsprint and foul up your research because of poor conclusions. This Research Guide discusses the traps that you can fall into.
Not all digitized newspapers are free. Many are behind a paywall, i.e., they require a subscription. But, there are ways to either reduce the cost or even eliminate it. This Research Guide discusses ways to save money on your subscriptions.
Another rewarding strategy in newspaper research has to do with immigrant ancestors’ surnames. Errors by clerks, census takers, or newspaper typesetters are incredibly common. This Research Guide includes a list of 100 common surnames, primarily of European origin, and their likely English equivalents that you might encounter in old newspapers due to phonetic spelling, anglicization, or misinterpretation.
Just searching for surnames or full names will not find as many articles that are available. You need to conduct what I call “Combination Searches”. Consider including a life event term (e.g., birth, marriage, etc.) with the surname to achieve more results. This Research Guide includes 200 Life Event terms to include in the search.
Just searching for surnames or full names will not find as many articles that are available. You need to conduct what I call “Combination Searches”. Consider including a business or occupational term with the surname to achieve more results. This Research Guide includes 50 Business and Occupational terms to include in the search.
Online newspapers are generally categorized by geography, e.g., country, state, city, province, etc. But not all published newspapers are organized that way. What about student newspapers, farming, religious, and foreign language newspapers? There are also very specialized newspapers, like Japanese Internment Camp newspapers and CCC newspapers. This Research Guide presents links to all these types of newspapers that have been curated by The Ancestor Hunt.
Are you trying combination searches (Name plus occupation) and having difficulty? Like a lot of words, in the “old days,” there were different names for occupations in the U.S. and the U.K. In this Research Guide, you will find 350 names of occupations and their meanings.
Are you searching in the Community or Local News for interesting tidbits about local residents? Often, if they are down with an illness or hospitalized, their illness might be published. Having difficulty? You might consider that in old newspapers in the U.S. and the UK, illnesses had different names in the “old days”. In this Research Guide, you will find 150 names of illnesses and their meanings and/or modern equivalents.

There will be additional Research Guides in the future, so check back often.

If you wish to subscribe ($47.99 for the first year, $19.99 for annual renewal), please go to the Subscription Page. Subscriptions include all Research Guides and all On-Demand Webinars.

On-Demand Webinars

All of the Webinars can be found on the Newspaper Research Academy On-Demand Webinars page. You can view them any time that you wish, as often as you like.

(Click on the + sign to view the description of the Webinar)

This Webinar discusses the most powerful techniques to maximize our search results.
This webinar shows the viewer how to use the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries provided by the Library of Congress and where to find non-digitized historical newspaper titles in U.S. libraries and other institutions.
This webinar discusses 95 of the best tips and techniques to get the most from your online historical newspaper research.
This webinar shows the viewer how to use the Advanced Search capabilities of Chronicling America, and how to use filtering to home in on results, as well as how to handle images presented with the results.
This webinar discusses the many varied ways to find obituaries, whether they be found in online newspapers, indexes, clipping books, etc. The viewer will also learn tips on how to best analyze obituary contents so that proper conclusions can be derived.
This webinar shows the viewer how to apply the absolute best techniques for searching for and obtaining ancestor newspaper articles.
This webinar focuses on using abbreviations and nicknames as a primary technique to gather more positive search results.
This webinar shows the viewer how to overcome the common OCR errors and how to structure search criteria to overcome these errors.
This webinar helps the beginner understand processes for handling old newspapers and converting them to digital form. It discusses why online newspaper research is such a challenge and how to overcome these challenges, so that they can become proficient researchers.
Coming Soon!
This webinar shows the viewer how to find all the titles that are in the Chronicling America newspaper database.
This webinar shows the viewer how to find all the titles that are in the Newspapers.com newspaper database.
This webinar shows the viewer how to find all the titles that are in the NewspaperArchive newspaper database.
This webinar shows the viewer how to find all the titles that are in the GenealogyBank newspaper database.

There will be additional On-Demand Webinars in the future, so check back often.

If you wish to subscribe ($47.99 for the first year, $19.99 for annual renewal), please go to the Subscription Page. Subscriptions include all Research Guides and all On-Demand Webinars.

Newspaper Research Free Resources

Advantage Archives

Artificial Intelligence

British Newspaper Archive

Chronicling America

Family Tree Magazine

FamilySearch

FindMyPast

Fulton History

GenealogyBank

Irish News Archives

NewspaperArchive

Newspapers.com

OldNews.com

Our Digital World

Veridian

Newspaper Research Premium Resources

These resources are provided by others and have a price tag.

Newspaper Research Books on Amazon

  • Finding Your Ancestors in Historical Newspapers: A Practical Guide to Improving Your Online Newspaper Research Results (Kenneth R. Marks, 2024) – https://amzn.to/40VXYGy
  • The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide: How to Find Your Ancestors in Archived Newspapers (James M. Beidler, 2018) – https://amzn.to/40SSKLN
  • Searching For Your Ancestors in Historic Newspapers (Claudia C. Breland, 2014) – https://amzn.to/4mpIdQo
  • How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers (Lisa Louise Cooke, 2012) – https://amzn.to/455vv3v

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