Harvard Referencing – Citing a Newspaper Article

If you’re writing about the media or referring to something in the news, you may have reason to cite a newspaper article in your university work. Since newspapers aren’t traditional academic sources, though, the rules for doing this are sometimes confusing.

With Harvard referencing, for instance, the information given in the reference list when citing a newspaper differs slightly from the format used for books and journal articles.

Citing a Newspaper Article (Named Author)

When the author of a newspaper article is named, citations should include an author name and year of publication:

Increasing house prices change human behaviour (Wade, 2016).

If the author is named in the text, simply give the year of publication in parentheses. Page numbers are also required if quoting a print article directly:

According to Wade (2016, p. 38), ‘rising property values change our behaviour.’

Since online versions of an article won’t have page numbers, you don’t usually have to give a pinpoint reference. However, if you think indicating the exact place in the text being quoted is important, you could use a paragraph number instead:

According to Wade (2016, para. 2), ‘rising property values change our behaviour.’

Citing a Newspaper Article (No Named Author)

Some newspaper articles don’t have a named author. If you need to cite an article like this, you can give the newspaper’s name as the author instead:

Fihi Ma Fihi was ‘masterminded by Melbourne-based producers and players Murat Yucel and Alisha Brooks’ (Australian, 2016, p. 24).

Reference List (Print Article)

As with other sources, you should add any newspaper articles you cited in your work to a reference list at the end of your document. The information to include for a print article is:

Surname, Initial(s). (Year) ‘Title of Article’, Title of Newspaper, day and/or month of publication, page number(s).

In practice, this would appear something like the following:

Wade, M. (2016) ‘How the housing boom is changing the way Australians live’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 October, p. 38.

As with citations, if no author is named, use the paper’s name instead:

Australian (2016). ‘Reviews: Bashka, Marsiano, Warpaint, Abrahams, DJO, Rattle’, The Australian, 8 October, pp. 24-25.

Reference List (Online Article)

Referencing an online article is similar to referencing a print article, except you give a URL and date of access instead of page numbers. For example:

Wade, M. (2016). ‘How the housing boom is changing the way Australians live’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 October [Online] . Available at http://www.smh.com.au/comment/how-the-housing-boom-has-changed-the-way-australians-live-20161011-grzoe1.html [Accessed 20 October 2016].

A Quick Note on Harvard Referencing

Although many universities ask students to use ‘Harvard referencing’, this is actually a generic term for parenthetical author–date referencing. As such, different institutions often have in-house styles.

It’s therefore very important to check your style guide before you start work on an essay, since it might specify a few minor differences to the approach described here.