The full title of this post should have read “Digitally Accessing Newspapers State by State,” and it’s from an article by Kyle Hurst appearing in the American Ancestors magazine for Winter 2026. I quote:
“Appreciating the importance of preserving US newspapers, all fifty states have participated in at least one project to digitize their newspaper collections.” WOW, indeed.
Your first click-to-website for finding digitized newspapers should be the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America (ChroniclingAmerica.loc.gov). This site “contains millions of newspaper pages from nearly every state and territory in the U.S. published through 1963.” Hurst states in her article that “about one third of the states have elected to keep their (digitized newspapers) solely accessible via Chronicling America.”
Other states offer their digitized newspapers via different institutions such as state archives, state universities or libraries. Our own Washington Digital Newspaper website brings together over 600,000 pages from Washington’s earliest Territorial newspapers to the present day. Freely accessible to the public, this growing collection complements the Washington State Library’s physical collection of more than 6500 newspaper titles.
I suggest you ask Google for “free digitized newspapers in XXXX” state and prepare to be amazed and rewarded.
