Get in touch: victor@vjbe.net.
What is Old News?
Old News is an open-access, community-driven repository providing high-fidelity, plain-text transcriptions of interesting historic newspaper articles. We believe plain text is the ultimate long-term data store: it is lightweight, easy to format, and a pleasure to read or reference.
Why did you make Old News?
Old News was originally born out of frustration while reading a history of 19th-century science that relies heavily on newspaper articles to support its claims, but leaves it to the reader to hunt down the original pages on platforms like The British Newspaper Archive. Since the text is in the public domain, we thought it would cost little effort to transcribe the works and host them on this site, making them easy to read and reference. Since then the archive has grown.
How to Contribute
Contributions and text corrections are highly encouraged. Whether you are fixing a typo or transcribing an entirely new source, your help keeps this archive accurate and accessible.
Fixing Typos & Mistakes
If you spot a typo or formatting error in our transcriptions, you can submit a pull request directly to our article repository on GitHub. For other kinds of mistakes, or if you prefer not to use GitHub, feel free to drop an email to victor@vjbe.net.
Adding New Sources
If you would like to contribute a new transcription, please include:
- The complete, high-fidelity text transcription.
- The raw screenshots or images used for your OCR process (to allow verification).
- The link to the original digital source, if applicable.
- The name of the publication, the date, and the page number.
- The author (if applicable)
Transcription Pipeline
Feel free to use any method of transcription you like. For your convenience I have open-sourced the pipeline I use.
Our Sources
We are constantly expanding our archive. We actively source and transcribe material from the following platforms:
We also closely monitor and utilize these outstanding digital repositories:
- Delpher – Dutch historical newspapers, books, and journals.
- Gallica – The digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
- Gale – Global research databases and primary source archives.
Scholarship
Old News has been used to support the following pieces of scholarship:
- (May 2026): Victor Elgersma used articles from Old News to write about the status of the Nebular Hypothesis in the mid-19th century. You can view his article here