How to Cite a Newspaper Article in Any Style
How to cite print and online newspaper articles in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, and Vancouver, with examples.
Newspaper articles look like they should be simple to cite – there’s a byline, a headline, a date – but the print-versus-online distinction, missing bylines, and inconsistent style-guide terminology trip up more students than journal articles do. A newspaper citation done wrong is also an easy one for a grader to spot, since most readers already know what a newspaper byline is supposed to look like.
This guide covers a single example article formatted in all six major citation styles, plus the variations you’ll hit for print articles and articles with no named author.
Print vs. Online: What Changes
The core details – author, headline, publication, date – stay the same whether you read the article in print or online. What changes is the locator: print articles cite a page number (often something like “A1” for the front section), while online articles cite a URL and, in Harvard and Vancouver, an access date. If a newspaper publishes the same article in both formats, cite whichever version you actually read.
Here’s the example we’ll use throughout: an online article titled “Coastal Towns Brace for a New Storm Season,” written by Grace Odom, published in The Boston Globe on April 3, 2025.
APA 7th Edition
Odom, G. (2025, April 3). Coastal towns brace for a new storm season. The Boston Globe. https://www.bostonglobe.com/coastal-towns-storm-season
- The full publication date appears in the parentheses, not only the year
- The headline is in sentence case with no italics or quotation marks
- The newspaper’s name is italicized
MLA 9th Edition
Odom, Grace. “Coastal Towns Brace for a New Storm Season.” The Boston Globe, 3 Apr. 2025, www.bostonglobe.com/coastal-towns-storm-season.
- The headline is in title case, inside quotation marks
- The date uses MLA’s day-month-year format with the month abbreviated
- The URL drops the “https://” prefix, following MLA convention
The MLA Style Center is the authoritative source for these container-based rules if you want to see them applied to other source types beyond newspapers.
Chicago (Notes-Bibliography)
Footnote:
- Grace Odom, “Coastal Towns Brace for a New Storm Season,” The Boston Globe, April 3, 2025, https://www.bostonglobe.com/coastal-towns-storm-season.
Bibliography:
Odom, Grace. “Coastal Towns Brace for a New Storm Season.” The Boston Globe, April 3, 2025. https://www.bostonglobe.com/coastal-towns-storm-season.
- The month is spelled out in full, unlike MLA’s abbreviation
- No page number is needed for an online-only version; a print edition would add a section and page after the date
Harvard
Odom, G. (2025) ‘Coastal towns brace for a new storm season’, The Boston Globe, 3 April. Available at: https://www.bostonglobe.com/coastal-towns-storm-season (Accessed: 10 April 2025).
- The headline sits in single quotation marks
- Harvard requires an access date for online sources – always include the date you actually read the article, not the publication date twice
IEEE
[1] G. Odom, “Coastal towns brace for a new storm season,” The Boston Globe, Apr. 3, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.bostonglobe.com/coastal-towns-storm-season
- Author initials precede the last name
- “[Online]” flags the source as a web-accessed reference before the “Available:” URL
Vancouver
- Odom G. Coastal towns brace for a new storm season. The Boston Globe [Internet]. 2025 Apr 3 [cited 2025 Apr 10]. Available from: https://www.bostonglobe.com/coastal-towns-storm-season
- No periods in the author’s initials
- “[Internet]” follows the newspaper name, and “[cited ...]” records the access date, matching Vancouver’s website conventions
When There’s No Named Author
Wire-service roundups, staff-written pieces, and short news briefs often run without a byline. When that happens, every style moves the headline into the author’s position:
APA: Local election results certified after recount. (2024, November 5). The Boston Globe. https://www.bostonglobe.com/election-recount
MLA: “Local Election Results Certified After Recount.” The Boston Globe, 5 Nov. 2024, www.bostonglobe.com/election-recount.
Chicago: “Local Election Results Certified After Recount.” The Boston Globe, November 5, 2024. https://www.bostonglobe.com/election-recount.
The alphabetization rule follows the same shift – sort the entry by the first significant word of the headline instead of a last name.
Wire Service Articles
Articles distributed by a wire service like the Associated Press or Reuters and republished by many local papers need the wire service credited, not only the newspaper that ran it:
APA: Associated Press. (2025, April 3). Coastal towns brace for a new storm season. The Boston Globe. https://www.bostonglobe.com/coastal-towns-storm-season
MLA: Associated Press. “Coastal Towns Brace for a New Storm Season.” The Boston Globe, 3 Apr. 2025, www.bostonglobe.com/coastal-towns-storm-season.
Use the wire service as the author whenever the byline credits it directly, even though the newspaper you read it in is a different name.
Opinion Pieces and Editorials
Op-eds and editorials follow the same structure as a standard news article, but it’s worth noting the piece’s genre in your paper’s prose (though not in the citation itself) so your reader understands they’re reading argument rather than reporting:
Odom, Grace. “Why Coastal Cities Need a New Storm Playbook.” The Boston Globe, 3 Apr. 2025, www.bostonglobe.com/coastal-playbook-opinion.
Unsigned editorials – pieces attributed to “The Editorial Board” rather than an individual – use that attribution as the author across every style, the same way you’d credit an organizational author.
Quick Reference Table
| Element | APA | MLA | Chicago | Harvard | IEEE | Vancouver |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Headline | Sentence case, no quotes | Title case, “quotes” | Title case, “quotes” | Sentence case, ‘quotes’ | Sentence case, “quotes” | Sentence case, no quotes |
| Newspaper name | Italic | Italic | Italic | Italic | Italic | Plain text |
| Date format | (2025, April 3) | 3 Apr. 2025 | April 3, 2025 | (2025) 3 April | Apr. 3, 2025 | 2025 Apr 3 |
| Access date required | No | No | Only if undated | Yes | No | Yes |
Citing a Print Edition
If you’re citing a physical newspaper rather than its website, swap the URL for a section and page number:
Odom, Grace. “Coastal Towns Brace for a New Storm Season.” The Boston Globe, 3 Apr. 2025, p. A1.
Most current style guides no longer distinguish print articles with a special label – the absence of a URL is enough to signal it’s a print source.
For general rules on citing web content that isn’t a newspaper – author position, no-date sources, and access dates by style – see our website citation guide. If you need a refresher on how each style’s in-text citation should look once you’ve built the reference entry, see our in-text citations guide.
If a newspaper citation is one of the first entries in your very first reference list, our first research paper checklist walks through the rest of the process. And once your list is built, don’t forget the hanging indent every style requires on the final page.
Common Mistakes
- Treating the newspaper name as the title. The headline is the article title; the newspaper name is the container or source title, and it’s always italicized separately.
- Forgetting the access date in Harvard and Vancouver. Both styles require it for online sources – APA and MLA generally don’t.
- Using the wrong date format for your style. MLA abbreviates the month (3 Apr. 2025); Chicago and APA spell it out or place it differently.
- Citing a paywalled article’s cached or archived URL. Use the newspaper’s own URL when possible, since an archive link may not resolve for your reader.
- Skipping the byline search. Many articles that look unbylined at first glance do have an author listed in small text near the headline or at the end of the piece – check before defaulting to the no-author format.
Try It with CiteTools
Newspaper citations have more edge cases than they first appear – print versus online, bylined versus unsigned, access dates required in some styles and not others. Paste the article’s URL into CiteTools.io and get it correctly formatted in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, or Vancouver, byline and access date handled automatically.