While newspaper articles aren’t academic sources in the traditional sense, there are times that you might need to cite one in an essay, such as when writing about current events or the media.
But there can be specific rules that apply when citing newspaper articles, depending on the system you’re using. Herein, we look at the conventions for APA referencing (7th edition).
For the most part, citing a newspaper article in APA referencing is similar to citing any other source. This means giving the author’s surname and a year of publication:
News Corp Australia has recently made several journalists redundant (Meade, 2016).
Alternatively, if the author is named in the text, simply give the year immediately afterwards:
Meade (2016) reports that several journalists at News Corp were made redundant.
If a newspaper article doesn’t have a named author, APA recommends using a shortened version of the article title instead:
Several journalists at News Corp Australia were recently made redundant in a cost-cutting exercise (‘News Corp Australia announces redundancies’, 2016).
Make sure to check carefully, though, as most articles will name an author somewhere.
The rules for quoting a newspaper article in APA referencing depend on whether the article is in print or online. For print articles, simply provide page numbers as you would for any other source:
According to Meade (2016), the MEAA responded by holding meetings ‘to advise members on their rights’ (p. 33).
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However, if the article is online and no page numbers are available, you should give a paragraph number instead:
The MEAA responded by holding meetings ‘to advise members on their rights’ (Meade, 2016, para. 7).
In your reference list, the information to include for a print newspaper article is as follows:
Author surname(s) and initial(s). (Year, month and day published). Article title. Newspaper, page numbers.
In the case of the article used in the examples above, we’d write:
Meade, A. (2016, December 7). News Corp Australia announces redundancies and $40m cost-cutting. The Guardian, pp. 33-34.
For an online newspaper article, the information given in the reference list is pretty much the same except that you provide a URL rather than page numbers. For example:
Meade, A. (2016, December 7). News Corp Australia announces redundancies and $40m cost-cutting. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/07/news-corp-australia-announces-redundancies-and-fresh-cost-cutting
And finally, if an article doesn’t have a named author, the title takes first position in the reference. If this was the case with the article cited above, for instance, we’d write:
News Corp Australia announces redundancies and $40m cost-cutting. (2016, December 7). The Guardian. ttps://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/07/news-corp-australia-announces-redundancies-and-fresh-cost-cutting
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