MyHeritage Launches OldNews.com – An Initial Review

MyHeritage has just announced and made available its Historical Newspaper Research subscription site, called Old News. I have included below the initial Press Release plus my initial review. As with all new services, there are some good things and things that need to be added and improved.

They have written a more detailed description of the service on their blog. I encourage you to read it HERE

My review is at the bottom of the press release.

I will be continuing to check out this new site and provide further reviews and much more information in the coming days and weeks.

The Press Release

OldNews.com includes hundreds of millions of pages from thousands of historical newspaper titles from the U.S., Europe, Oceania and more

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah, March 1, 2024 — MyHeritage, the leading global family history platform, announced today the launch of OldNews.com, an innovative website for historical newspapers. OldNews.com enables genealogists, researchers, and history enthusiasts to search, save, and share articles about people and events throughout history. At launch, OldNews.com includes a huge repository of hundreds of millions of historical newspaper pages from around the world, with millions more added monthly. The website features easy navigation and consists of a diverse range of high-quality publications, from major international newspapers to small-town journals and gazettes.

At launch, OldNews.com more than doubles the amount of historical newspaper content that was previously available on MyHeritage. The website includes all the historical newspapers from MyHeritage, plus new, unique content. The new content was processed using best-in-class optical character recognition (OCR) technology and enhanced with sophisticated algorithms developed in-house by MyHeritage.

Historical newspapers offer a treasure trove of stories that are rich in detail. In the past, you didn’t need to be famous to appear in the newspaper; anyone could be found in them, which makes them of tremendous value to genealogists, historians, and educators. Whether you are looking to discover fascinating stories about your ancestors and the wider historical context of their lives, or want to gain deeper insights into watershed moments in history, OldNews.com is a vital resource for you. In addition to headline news, historical newspapers offer valuable details about life events such as birth announcements, marriage announcements and obituaries; sports and culture; lifestyle news; advertisements, and more.

OldNews.com offers a wide range of publications from local, national, and international news, with extensive coverage of the 1800s and 1900s. At launch, the site includes newspapers from publications across the U.S., Canada, U.K., Austria, the Netherlands, and Australia. Millions of newspaper pages are added each month, and content from additional countries will be added in the future. The site is available in 11 languages: English, French, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. More newspapers in some of these languages will be added soon.

“Historical newspapers contain a wealth of information and provide an unparalleled level of detail about the past,” says Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “We are launching OldNews.com to serve as our focal point for historical newspapers, with a robust content offering. This release is just the beginning; we have an incredible pipeline of additional content and features, and ambitious plans to make OldNews.com the number one online repository of international historical newspapers beyond the English-speaking world. On a personal level, I’ve uncovered wonderful insights into my own family history through historical newspapers, and I’m confident OldNews.com will deliver similar, exceptional value to researchers of all kinds. For genealogists, nothing beats OldNews!”  

The website includes an easy-to-use search engine so anyone can quickly and effortlessly find information on a person, topic, or event. Every search result includes a zoomed-in thumbnail image of the article, with the terms from the search query highlighted. The search terms are also highlighted when viewing the full article. Additional browsing capabilities and new features such as saving and sharing newspaper clippings will be added in the coming months.

OldNews.com is a subscription-based service, and customers can start a 7-day free trial to explore the content before committing to an annual OldNews.com Pro subscription, which costs $99/year with 25% off the first year.

Content from OldNews.com is also accessible with MyHeritage’s new Omni subscription plan, launched today. The Omni plan is a one-stop shop for genealogy and a superset of MyHeritage’s Complete plan. It includes full access to all features and content on MyHeritage, plus all newspapers on OldNews.com, a Geni.com Pro plan, all 2,136 genealogy and DNA webinars on Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and unlimited photo scanning using MyHeritage’s Reimagine photo app. The new Omni plan gives family history enthusiasts of all levels highly affordable access to a vast range of family tree tools, historical records, historical newspapers, innovative technologies, and expert knowledge to help propel their research to new heights. This combines many of the best tools and services in the genealogy industry into one subscription plan that is much more affordable than when purchased separately.

Existing MyHeritage users can log in to OldNews.com with their MyHeritage account credentials, and new users registering via OldNews.com can use the same login credentials to access MyHeritage. OldNews.com supports Two-Factor Authentication, for enhanced security.

MyHeritage Old News – Review

There are some good things and things that need to be improved. All in all, I think the site shows great potential. Here are my review comments:

• I like the Image Handler. It is modern in that it has contrast controls. Moving the image around and zooming in and out is easy.
• I like that you can see the results of the OCR process in text form
• The text is highlighted and the first instance displayed zooms right to the article that the highlighted text appears in – this is good
• Zooming in and out with a mouse is handy.
• I would like to be able to clip an article
• I would like to be able to download a PDF of the page. One can print the page and change the output to PDF alternatively
• When I print a page, it would be useful to include the citation in the printed page along with the image.
• The auto-generated file name when downloading a page should include the location.
• The biggest drawback is the lack of a title list including locations and dates. Making a purchase decision is difficult if on does not know what is in the database beyond the country.
• I do not like that I cannot enter a sub-location such as state, county, and/or city from a drop-down. You can enter a sub-location, but it does not restrict search results to that sub-location. It merely sorts the results with that sub-location first.
• No Advanced Search features, such as “not on a page”, proximity search, Booleans, etc. are evident.
• The addition of user correction of the text would be an ideal addition. Like Veridian Software’s capability. Paying it forward is a way for users to be more engaged with improving the service.
• Filtering of results needs a lot of work. The Publication Name would be improved with drop downs. Publication Date needs to include date range. There should be a location filter that offers sub-locations.

In summary, this service shows great potential. Most people will not purchase the service until a Title List including dates and locations is provided.