6 ms·

MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers

109 points by MISTERJerk2U 3y ago

jaysonelliot 3y ago
They seem to be competing with https://www.newspapers.com/ https://www.newspapers.com/, which has been providing access to historical newspapers for about 10 years now. I did a few searches on OldNews.com to compare with Newspapers.com, and it seems that OldNews has a smaller database, with far fewer newspapers. It didn't contain results from a sampling of local newspapers that I tried, nor from major newspapers like the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, or Chicago Tribune. At $99/year, OldNews is also slightly more expensive than the basic Newspapers.com subscription. Their UX is also lacking, with poor filtering options that make it difficult to select a specific publication, city, or range of dates. It's not clear to me how they hope to compete with the incumbent in the market.
- geor9e 3y ago
  They're probably just banking on the fact that MyHeritage has a lot more customers than either one of those, who probably haven't heard of either one, and are already proven to shell out money to research their family history. Whatever you show them first, they'll use. Of course the smart customers like you are going to stick with the better alternative but I think you're in a small minority of elites.
  - jaysonelliot 3y ago
    Newspapers.com is an Ancestry.com property. I'm not sure who's the larger company in terms of user base, do you know their respective sizes?
    - collaborative 3y ago
      They are both around 4 milion paying users (each)
      - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
        I have accounts on both. In 2018, I would visit Ancestry 80% and MyH 20%. MyH was good for post-1940 records. Now it's ~99% A & 1% MyH. I try MyH when I can't find something on Ancestry - generally w/o luck. Most of my MyH hits are profiles from FamilySearch (probably ones that I made).
    - geor9e 3y ago
      Oh, I didn't know that. Two rivals doing the exact same thing. The move makes even more sense now.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > OldNews is also slightly more expensive than the basic Newspapers.com subscription. newpapers.com is $150/yr or $20/mo for unlocked content - and $90/yr or $8/mo for partially unlocked content. Or you can pay $360/yr for Ancestry and get newspapers.com for $150/yr for unlocked - $90/yr for partially unlocked. Or you can pay $600/yr for Ancestry and get newspapers.com at no extra charge.
- greggsy 3y ago
  In Australia at least, the state and national library sites offer free, searchable access to newspapers going back since the early 1800’s. Even obscure community papers are available. Is a similar thing not offered by the equivalent US institutions? What is the threshold of ‘worthiness’ for a publication to ge archived and served by Library of Congress?
  - ghostly_s 3y ago
    The same is available here, but through local libraries, so not necessarily available to everyone, because most everything is at the whim of local government in the US.
dima55 3y ago
The #1 thing anybody should be asking for here is a list of newspapers they archive. I cannot see it. The obvious competitor to these people is https://www.newspapers.com https://www.newspapers.com and they at least have a crude one: https://www.newspapers.com/papers https://www.newspapers.com/papers. Note that the Seattle Times (and newspapers from the NW in general) are missing. Does oldnews do better here?
- jaysonelliot 3y ago
  It seems like OldNews has a very limited set of papers, I couldn't find results from any of the major newspapers (NY Times, WaPo, Chicago Trib, etc) or from a sampling of local papers that I tried.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > Note that the Seattle Times (and newspapers from the NW in general) are missing. Does oldnews do better here? A LOC search for WA state showed some content on but not ST. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/?state=Washington https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/?state=Washing...
dash2 3y ago
It's such a shame that recent historical newspapers are closed source in this way. We could learn so much from quantitative analysis of culture if there were downloadable data or at least an API.
- dash2 3y ago
  Just to add an example: https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/119646/13/WRAP-historical-analysis-national-subjective-wellbeing-digitized-books-Hills-2019.pdf https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/119646/13/WRAP-historical-analysi...
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
  Well you can, go to your local library and look at microfiche. It's how we used to do it. Primary research. If you're lucky they may have OCR or a tagging system. If not, reels of microfiche
  - jvan 3y ago
    Microfiche is a small flat sheet, microfilm is on reels. "Fiche" being French for card. The More You Know...
    - calvinmorrison 3y ago
      Huh! Til
  - dash2 3y ago
    That's not gonna work at million-scale, though.
- echase3 3y ago
  You can easily find historical newspapers on archive.org. For example: https://archive.org/details/sim_los-angeles-times_the-los-angeles-times_1907-03-02/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/sim_los-angeles-times_the-los-an...
  - 3y ago
marapuru 3y ago
In the Netherlands we have a great online and free resource called Delpher that allows citizens to freely browse over 2 million newspapers from previous decades. Its bizarre to see how important archival content like that is being monetized instead of commoditised by MyHeritage… For example, Delpher allowed me to investigate the life of some of my family members from whom I knew close to nothing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ajxs 3y ago
In case this is useful to anyone, there's lots of digitised newspapers freely available in the Library of Congress: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  Interesting that the newest available is from 1963.
  - riordan 3y ago
    Chronicling America is great, but as you’ve noticed it’s limited to issues that are in the public domain. It’s not just LC, the National Digital Newspaper Program[1] has been funding hundreds of libraries across all 50 USA states to make it possible since the mid-00s. Australia’s national library offers Trove[2], which has a huge collection of Australian public domain newspapers. Most of their repository is likely funded by your tax dollars and is there for the public to use. [1]: https://www.neh.gov/divisions/preservation/national-digital-newspaper-program https://www.neh.gov/divisions/preservation/national-digital-... [2]:https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/ https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/
    - ajxs 3y ago
      Trove is fantastic. It came in handy very recently for the same project I used the Library of Congress for[1]. The Museums of History New South Wales has a great online archive as well[2]. [1]: https://ajxs.me/blog/The_Identity_of_The_Sanctimonious_Kid.html https://ajxs.me/blog/The_Identity_of_The_Sanctimonious_Kid.h... [2]: https://mhnsw.au/collections/state-archives-collection/ https://mhnsw.au/collections/state-archives-collection/
riffic 3y ago
there's a wealth of data locked up in these old newspapers and it's kind of a shame it's only being valued by these genealogy corporations. They're not really the best stewards of the data.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Archiving is really expensive and time consuming. Making it actually useful is more so. Archiving some things like photos is also complicated from a rights perspective given it wasn't even on the radar when a lot of the content was originally used.
shortformblog 3y ago
I’m the target audience for this, as I use Newspapers.com for a lot of my research. There are a lot of services like this. $99 is cheaper than the current $75/6 months I pay for them. I think Newspapers.com needs the competition, but I wish it was from a source other than a directly competing genealogy company.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
eshack94 3y ago
It would be awesome if all these newspaper archives were freely available via Archive.org or a similar service. Seems strange to need a subscription to view old newspapers. Perhaps part of the fees pay for hosting costs and the work that goes into compiling so many sources and slapping a easily navigable UI on top of it, etc.
- fffcvddd 3y ago
  Finding papers and digitizing them takes a a lot of work. Is nice that sone not for profits like archive.org do that work for no cost but expecting others to do it for you for free is what seems strange to me.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Archive.org, for example, does a lot of good work. But without too much hyperbole, there's essentially an infinite amount of paper with lines on it in libraries, historical societies, and private collections around the world. It's never going to all be digitized.
ansmithz42 3y ago
My impression on both is that they are US/European centric. Not very true to their "scouring the world for newspapers" line. So, they only show events that impact or are reported on in those areas. I know that newspapers.com has a few (2 or 3) asian newspapers but that is all.

109 points by MISTERJerk2U 3y ago

They seem to be competing with https://www.newspapers.com/ https://www.newspapers.com/, which has been providing access to historical newspapers for about 10 years now. I did a few searches on OldNews.com to compare with Newspapers.com, and it seems that OldNews has a smaller database, with far fewer newspapers. It didn't contain results from a sampling of local newspapers that I tried, nor from major newspapers like the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, or Chicago Tribune. At $99/year, OldNews is also slightly more expensive than the basic Newspapers.com subscription. Their UX is also lacking, with poor filtering options that make it difficult to select a specific publication, city, or range of dates. It's not clear to me how they hope to compete with the incumbent in the market.

geor9e 3y ago
They're probably just banking on the fact that MyHeritage has a lot more customers than either one of those, who probably haven't heard of either one, and are already proven to shell out money to research their family history. Whatever you show them first, they'll use. Of course the smart customers like you are going to stick with the better alternative but I think you're in a small minority of elites.
- jaysonelliot 3y ago
  Newspapers.com is an Ancestry.com property. I'm not sure who's the larger company in terms of user base, do you know their respective sizes?
  - collaborative 3y ago
    They are both around 4 milion paying users (each)
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      I have accounts on both. In 2018, I would visit Ancestry 80% and MyH 20%. MyH was good for post-1940 records. Now it's ~99% A & 1% MyH. I try MyH when I can't find something on Ancestry - generally w/o luck. Most of my MyH hits are profiles from FamilySearch (probably ones that I made).
  - geor9e 3y ago
    Oh, I didn't know that. Two rivals doing the exact same thing. The move makes even more sense now.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> OldNews is also slightly more expensive than the basic Newspapers.com subscription. newpapers.com is $150/yr or $20/mo for unlocked content - and $90/yr or $8/mo for partially unlocked content. Or you can pay $360/yr for Ancestry and get newspapers.com for $150/yr for unlocked - $90/yr for partially unlocked. Or you can pay $600/yr for Ancestry and get newspapers.com at no extra charge.
greggsy 3y ago
In Australia at least, the state and national library sites offer free, searchable access to newspapers going back since the early 1800’s. Even obscure community papers are available. Is a similar thing not offered by the equivalent US institutions? What is the threshold of ‘worthiness’ for a publication to ge archived and served by Library of Congress?
- ghostly_s 3y ago
  The same is available here, but through local libraries, so not necessarily available to everyone, because most everything is at the whim of local government in the US.

dima55 3y ago

The #1 thing anybody should be asking for here is a list of newspapers they archive. I cannot see it. The obvious competitor to these people is https://www.newspapers.com https://www.newspapers.com and they at least have a crude one: https://www.newspapers.com/papers https://www.newspapers.com/papers. Note that the Seattle Times (and newspapers from the NW in general) are missing. Does oldnews do better here?

jaysonelliot 3y ago
It seems like OldNews has a very limited set of papers, I couldn't find results from any of the major newspapers (NY Times, WaPo, Chicago Trib, etc) or from a sampling of local papers that I tried.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> Note that the Seattle Times (and newspapers from the NW in general) are missing. Does oldnews do better here? A LOC search for WA state showed some content on but not ST. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/?state=Washington https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/?state=Washing...

dash2 3y ago

It's such a shame that recent historical newspapers are closed source in this way. We could learn so much from quantitative analysis of culture if there were downloadable data or at least an API.

dash2 3y ago
Just to add an example: https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/119646/13/WRAP-historical-analysis-national-subjective-wellbeing-digitized-books-Hills-2019.pdf https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/119646/13/WRAP-historical-analysi...
calvinmorrison 3y ago
Well you can, go to your local library and look at microfiche. It's how we used to do it. Primary research. If you're lucky they may have OCR or a tagging system. If not, reels of microfiche
- jvan 3y ago
  Microfiche is a small flat sheet, microfilm is on reels. "Fiche" being French for card. The More You Know...
  - calvinmorrison 3y ago
    Huh! Til
- dash2 3y ago
  That's not gonna work at million-scale, though.
echase3 3y ago
You can easily find historical newspapers on archive.org. For example: https://archive.org/details/sim_los-angeles-times_the-los-angeles-times_1907-03-02/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/sim_los-angeles-times_the-los-an...
- 3y ago

marapuru 3y ago

In the Netherlands we have a great online and free resource called Delpher that allows citizens to freely browse over 2 million newspapers from previous decades. Its bizarre to see how important archival content like that is being monetized instead of commoditised by MyHeritage… For example, Delpher allowed me to investigate the life of some of my family members from whom I knew close to nothing.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ajxs 3y ago

In case this is useful to anyone, there's lots of digitised newspapers freely available in the Library of Congress: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

everybodyknows 3y ago
Interesting that the newest available is from 1963.
- riordan 3y ago
  Chronicling America is great, but as you’ve noticed it’s limited to issues that are in the public domain. It’s not just LC, the National Digital Newspaper Program[1] has been funding hundreds of libraries across all 50 USA states to make it possible since the mid-00s. Australia’s national library offers Trove[2], which has a huge collection of Australian public domain newspapers. Most of their repository is likely funded by your tax dollars and is there for the public to use. [1]: https://www.neh.gov/divisions/preservation/national-digital-newspaper-program https://www.neh.gov/divisions/preservation/national-digital-... [2]:https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/ https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/
  - ajxs 3y ago
    Trove is fantastic. It came in handy very recently for the same project I used the Library of Congress for[1]. The Museums of History New South Wales has a great online archive as well[2]. [1]: https://ajxs.me/blog/The_Identity_of_The_Sanctimonious_Kid.html https://ajxs.me/blog/The_Identity_of_The_Sanctimonious_Kid.h... [2]: https://mhnsw.au/collections/state-archives-collection/ https://mhnsw.au/collections/state-archives-collection/

riffic 3y ago

there's a wealth of data locked up in these old newspapers and it's kind of a shame it's only being valued by these genealogy corporations. They're not really the best stewards of the data.

ghaff 3y ago
Archiving is really expensive and time consuming. Making it actually useful is more so. Archiving some things like photos is also complicated from a rights perspective given it wasn't even on the radar when a lot of the content was originally used.

shortformblog 3y ago

I’m the target audience for this, as I use Newspapers.com for a lot of my research. There are a lot of services like this. $99 is cheaper than the current $75/6 months I pay for them. I think Newspapers.com needs the competition, but I wish it was from a source other than a directly competing genealogy company.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

eshack94 3y ago

It would be awesome if all these newspaper archives were freely available via Archive.org or a similar service. Seems strange to need a subscription to view old newspapers. Perhaps part of the fees pay for hosting costs and the work that goes into compiling so many sources and slapping a easily navigable UI on top of it, etc.

fffcvddd 3y ago
Finding papers and digitizing them takes a a lot of work. Is nice that sone not for profits like archive.org do that work for no cost but expecting others to do it for you for free is what seems strange to me.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Archive.org, for example, does a lot of good work. But without too much hyperbole, there's essentially an infinite amount of paper with lines on it in libraries, historical societies, and private collections around the world. It's never going to all be digitized.

ansmithz42 3y ago

My impression on both is that they are US/European centric. Not very true to their "scouring the world for newspapers" line. So, they only show events that impact or are reported on in those areas. I know that newspapers.com has a few (2 or 3) asian newspapers but that is all.