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Ask HN: How to search for old dated news articles?

8 points by symbolepro 9y ago

I searched on google, but google shows up for only about last 5 years articles.

Top19 9y ago
+1 on this, would also like to know. I would in general like to say that being a researcher in our society is such an underrated skill. Knowing how to do legal research for instance is an incredibly important skill. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the richest man in the United States when he died in 1877, was wealthy because he overheard of the Gibbons v Ogden case which made certain monopolies illegal and allowed him to build his canal empire. Jeff Bezos learning about Quill Corp v North Dakota in 1992 and it’s implications for internet sales tax was one of the drivers for him starting Amazon.com.
oldsklgdfth 9y ago
The internet archive is a good resource. I had a professor that researched web archiving. Basically the internet is dynamic and constantly changing. Sites come and go. The same is true for news articles. The example he used was hurricane Katrina. There was a flood of stories unfolding during the event. But most of them have been removed and consolidated general information article. The resolution of the event is lost.
sova 9y ago
Depending on what era you are looking for, your local city library or university libraries will have lots of newspaper articles and age-old journal publications on microfiche.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  +1. Your local librarian also is enormously useful for this sort of search.
  - sova 9y ago
    Librarians are a largely untapped resource, it's true!
shoovi 9y ago
Have you tried searching for digitized news articles via google books?
- symbolepro 9y ago
  Yes, I tried searching on google books. For e.g. I searched for "world war 1" but I did not get any book or news articles from that period (1914-1918). The oldest was from 1970 around. And most of them are from >2000 period.
PaulHoule 9y ago
There is a real "ahistorical turn" where people do not read about the past. And if there is a lesson of history, it is that people do not learn from history. Unfortunately there is an "event horizon" in that text after 1970-something was born digital (most newspapers starting using word processors in that decade) but earlier text has to be digitized at great cost. For instance I roll my eyes at the A.I. safety discussions today that are ignorant of the similar discussions circa 1970, especially the inane "double-exponential" idea. Also, Enron was preceeded by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_Funding in which somebody programmed a 360 to generate hundreds of thousands of fake life insurance policies.

8 points by symbolepro 9y ago

I searched on google, but google shows up for only about last 5 years articles.

+1 on this, would also like to know. I would in general like to say that being a researcher in our society is such an underrated skill. Knowing how to do legal research for instance is an incredibly important skill. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the richest man in the United States when he died in 1877, was wealthy because he overheard of the Gibbons v Ogden case which made certain monopolies illegal and allowed him to build his canal empire. Jeff Bezos learning about Quill Corp v North Dakota in 1992 and it’s implications for internet sales tax was one of the drivers for him starting Amazon.com.

oldsklgdfth 9y ago

The internet archive is a good resource. I had a professor that researched web archiving. Basically the internet is dynamic and constantly changing. Sites come and go. The same is true for news articles. The example he used was hurricane Katrina. There was a flood of stories unfolding during the event. But most of them have been removed and consolidated general information article. The resolution of the event is lost.

sova 9y ago

Depending on what era you are looking for, your local city library or university libraries will have lots of newspaper articles and age-old journal publications on microfiche.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
+1. Your local librarian also is enormously useful for this sort of search.
- sova 9y ago
  Librarians are a largely untapped resource, it's true!

shoovi 9y ago

Have you tried searching for digitized news articles via google books?

symbolepro 9y ago
Yes, I tried searching on google books. For e.g. I searched for "world war 1" but I did not get any book or news articles from that period (1914-1918). The oldest was from 1970 around. And most of them are from >2000 period.

PaulHoule 9y ago

There is a real "ahistorical turn" where people do not read about the past. And if there is a lesson of history, it is that people do not learn from history. Unfortunately there is an "event horizon" in that text after 1970-something was born digital (most newspapers starting using word processors in that decade) but earlier text has to be digitized at great cost. For instance I roll my eyes at the A.I. safety discussions today that are ignorant of the similar discussions circa 1970, especially the inane "double-exponential" idea. Also, Enron was preceeded by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_Funding in which somebody programmed a 360 to generate hundreds of thousands of fake life insurance policies.