About News Archive

News Archive is a digital archive of historical newspapers, launched on 1 June 2026. It offers a modern, intuitive interface to primary-source newspaper material, along with AI-assisted research capabilities.

Our mission is to make historical news easier to explore, read, and understand. We focus on:

A fast, reliable, user-friendly website

We want historical research to feel smooth and intuitive, whether you are browsing casually or carrying out detailed research.

High-quality article transcripts

Every article in News Archive is proofread thoroughly and made available as readable text, while still preserving access to the original scanned newspaper page.

Accessibility

Selected articles can be listened to as audio recordings, making the archive more accessible and easier to use in different contexts.

Free basic access

Basic access to articles is not hidden behind a paywall. We believe historical news should be widely available.

What's in the archive?

News Archive currently contains 2,286 articles from 4 US newspaper publications, with 23,400 browsable pages.

The material currently online covers the period 1866–1921. Most of the articles currently online are from the Atlanta Tri-Weekly Journal (1920–1921).

Titles currently online:

Atlanta Tri-Weekly Journal (1920–1921) — 1,954 articles
The San Francisco Call (1895–1904) — 294 articles
New-York Tribune (1866–1900) — 31 articles
The Tombstone Epitaph (1881–1882) — 7 articles

For now, coverage remains concentrated in a relatively small number of titles and years, but it is improving rapidly.

Meet Airi, the AI research assistant

Airi makes it easy to navigate the archive through a natural, conversational interface. She can summarise and explain historical articles while keeping the original source text visible.

Airi's capabilities are developing rapidly. In time, she will be able to provide background information on the people, places and events mentioned in articles, as well as support more advanced research tasks such as creating research reports and timelines, comparing coverage across newspapers, and helping to interpret multilingual sources. These features are not available yet.

Our goal is for Airi to become the AI assistant of choice for anyone researching historical newspapers and other news sources, whether for personal interest or serious research.

Historical language

The newspapers in the archive reflect the time and cultural context in which they were produced. Articles may contain offensive, discriminatory, or otherwise distressing language, and they may report events inaccurately or from a partisan point of view. In the interests of historical accuracy, we do not censor or modify such content. We are, however, investigating ways to provide additional context that can help readers identify potential bias in the source material.