The other day, two words came into my mind, seemingly out of nowhere. They were Distortion and Intention. As soon as I recognized these two words, I knew what they were about – newspaper research.
I have been an aficionado, an evangelist, and an educator, trying to encourage more genealogy researchers to incorporate historical newspaper research into their research repertoire… for years.
I have strongly encouraged people to understand that the challenge of searching old newspapers is a significant one, primarily because of the quality (or lack thereof) of 100- or 200-year-old papers.
But there are finer points, and this is the reason for this article.
So let’s look at three barriers to fulfilling newspaper research.
- Distortion
- Definition: The accumulation of mechanical and technological imperfections that alter the original text between the author’s pen and today’s searchable digital record.
- Examples:
- OCR misreads caused by poor quality microfilm scans, ink smudges, broken type, faded paper.
- Hyphenation at line breaks (“Mont-gom-ery”) that creates index entries which don’t match full words.
- Mis-indexing due to word fragmentation or substitution (“Smith” indexed as “Snuth”).
- Impact: Even if a researcher uses the exact correct search term, results may be buried, incomplete, or missing entirely.
- Intention
- Definition: The evolving meaning and presentation of the article from the author’s original purpose through every stage of production and reproduction.
- Examples:
- An editor alters a headline to fit column space, shifting emphasis or dropping a surname.
- A typesetter introduces spelling changes, abbreviations, or errors.
- Later, microfilm operators crop edges or lose content in shadows.
- Impact: The final searchable version of the article often no longer perfectly reflects the author’s original intention, making discovery harder.
- Education/Experience of the Researcher
- Definition: The researcher’s skill, background knowledge, and creativity in navigating the above obstacles.
- Examples:
- Knowing to try variant spellings, wildcards, and combination searches.
- Understanding local dialects, abbreviations, and newspaper publishing practices.
- Recognizing the limits of OCR and compensating with browsing, page-by-page searching, or consulting multiple databases.
- Impact: Experience mitigates distortion and intention problems, but cannot eliminate them.
Why This Matters
When genealogists complain that “the database must not have it,” the truth is more often that distortion (bad inputs) and intention (altered meaning) have combined to obscure what is there. The researcher’s skill helps—but the hidden traps lie deeper than the search box.
The Moral of the Story
The answer, in lieu of AI coming on its white horse in the next few years to mitigate distortion issues (and maybe intention to a degree) is …Education. Learn before you search.
Conclusion
The answer, for now, is to educate yourself in order to craft winning searches and to develop the understanding (and the patience) to overcome distortion and appreciate intention.
How can you do that?
Try this… The Newspaper Research Academy
