While not a standard academic source, you can cite newspapers in an essay. But you have to be careful to avoid fake news. And you need to know how to cite them correctly. Here, for example, is how you do it with Chicago footnote referencing.
Footnote Citations
Correct referencing is vital in academic writing. With Chicago footnotes, you should give the following information in your first footnote citation of a print newspaper article:
n. Author Name, ‘Title of Article’, Title of Newspaper, date of publication, page number.
In practice, this would look something like this:
1. Elle Hunt, ‘What is fake news? How to spot it and what you can do to stop it’, The Guardian, 17 December 2016, 21.
This is a little different when using an online article, since you won’t have page numbers to cite. Instead, give the URL of the article and (if required by your university) a date of access:
2. Linda Kiernan, ‘Frondeurs and fake news: how misinformation ruled in 17th-century France’, The Independent, 5 August, 2017, accessed 12 September 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/frondeurs-and-fake-news-how-misinformation-ruled-in-17th-century-france-a7872276.html.
You can then shorten repeat citations of the same article to just the author’s surname, an abbreviated version of the title, and (if relevant) a page number.
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Bibliography
In your bibliography, the basic format for a newspaper article is similar to the first footnote. However, you should reverse the first author’s names, and you don’t need to give page numbers (even if you’re citing a print article). The punctuation is a little different, too, as shown below:
Surname, First Name(s). ‘Title of Article’. Title of Newspaper, date of publication.
As with footnotes, make sure to include a URL for online articles. And give a date of access, too, if your university requires it for other online sources (check your style guide). For instance, the articles used above would be listed as follows:
Hunt, Elle. ‘What is fake news? How to spot it and what you can do to stop it’. The Guardian, 17 December 2016.
Kiernan, Linda. ‘Frondeurs and fake news: how misinformation ruled in 17th-century France’. The Independent, 5 August, 2017. Accessed 12 September 2017. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/frondeurs-and-fake-news-how-misinformation-ruled-in-17th-century-france-a7872276.html.
Like any source, newspaper articles should be listed alphabetically by author surname. If no author is named (which does happen on occasion), use the title in first position for footnotes and the bibliography entry.