How to Cite a Newspaper Article in MLA

How to Cite a Newspaper Article in MLA: Quick Answer

Name the journalist, put the headline in quotation marks and title case, italicize the newspaper, and keep The when the masthead uses it. Write the date as day, abbreviated month, year. Add p. or pp. and the print page when you opened a paginated copy. If the masthead names an edition, put late ed. or the equivalent in the version slot. If you need the section name, put it in the location slot before the page. For a story you opened online, Handbook 5.84 ends the entry with a DOI, a permalink, or a URL — newspapers almost never have a DOI, so a permalink or URL is the usual close, and 5.96 usually drops https://. Pair every Works Cited line with an in-text citation that uses the author, or a shortened headline if there is no byline.

The Official Rule, from the MLA Handbook and Style Center

A newspaper or magazine article uses the same nine core elements as a book. The headline is the source. The paper or magazine is the first container. The publisher slot is usually empty for a periodical. Fill only the elements that apply, in template order, as the citations-by-format page says. The Works Cited quick guide is the container definition this page follows. For anything you opened online, 5.84 then picks a location.

That title sentence is why The New York Times keeps The in both your prose and the Works Cited list. The initial-article post answers the question directly: retain the article. Alphabetize the entry under N, not T. Do not write New York Times to look concise. The location sentence is from Handbook 5.84, restated on the Style Center's 30 October 2024 database post. A daily paper almost never has a DOI; use the permalink if the site or database offers one, otherwise the URL you can still open.

Newspaper vs Magazine vs Journal vs News Site

MLA does not split "newspaper website" from "news website" the way APA 7 does. If you opened a dated article in a periodical container — The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic, The Economist — cite the article and italicize the periodical. A standalone page on a government or organization site is a website. A peer-reviewed article with vol. and no. is a journal article. Use this page for journalism; use those pages for the other two containers. There is no separate MLA magazine slug on this site, so The Atlantic and The New Yorker stay here.

Official Newspaper Examples

These four Works Cited lines are official Style Center strings. Victor is the online New York Times example on the serial-comma page. Pfanner is the official example on the initial-article post. Soloski is the print example on the newspaper-sections post. The unsigned Economist leader is the official no-byline periodical example on the unsigned-website-article post.

Victor and Pfanner show the online pattern: no page numbers, URL starting at www. or the host, The retained. Soloski shows the print extras that disappear online: a named section in the location slot and p. 5. The Economist line begins with the headline because there is no byline — do not write Anonymous. The Style Center's Victor example uses the Times URL for the Maine overtime comma case that the serial-comma post discusses.

Core Elements Students Miss

Author, including wire stories

Invert the byline: Last, First. Two authors take and and a second name in normal order. Three or more take the first name plus et al. See how to cite multiple authors for the shared rule. A columnist is the author of an opinion piece. If there is no byline, start with the headline; see how to cite a source with no author.

Do not list Associated Press, Reuters, or another wire service as the author. The Style Center news-agency post is explicit. Cite the version you actually opened. The news-agency history post says not to reconstruct the wire original.

Headline and container title

Put the headline in quotation marks and title case. Keep a printed subtitle after a colon. Italicize the newspaper or magazine. Keep The, A, or An when it is part of the masthead: The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Economist. Ignore that article only when you alphabetize. If the paper is local and the city is not in the name, MLA teaching pages add the city in square brackets after the title — The Gazette [Montreal] is the usual classroom form. That is a labelled pattern, not a license to invent a local paper. National papers do not need a city.

Date

Use day-month-year, not month-day-year: 16 Mar. 2017. Abbreviate months longer than four letters: Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec. Write May, June, and July in full, as the official 8 June 2007 editorial does. Daily papers take the full calendar date. Monthly magazines may print only a month and year; weekly magazines often print a cover date. Use the date on the copy you opened — the dateline or "Published" stamp, not "Updated" and not the day you downloaded a PDF. If the living page has no date, see how to cite a source with no date.

Edition, section, and pages

If the masthead names an edition, include it as the version. The newspaper-editions post says yes. The official unsigned editorial below is the worked case: late ed. before the page. If you need the section name, the newspaper-sections post puts it in the location slot, as Soloski does: Arts and Leisure sec., p. 5. Keep section letters that are part of the page number: p. A28. Use p. for one page and pp. for a range. University library guides following MLA 9 write a jump story as the first page plus a plus sign (p. A1+). That is a labelled template, not an invented article. The Style Center's own database page-range example uses the same 16+ form for a magazine in Academic OneFile.

Databases, Permalinks, Paywalls, and Access Dates

This is the failure mode students actually hit. They paste a campus-proxy search URL, drop the original page, or add Accessed on every Times link. Handbook 5.84, restated on 30 October 2024, prefers a DOI, then a permalink, then a URL. Handbook 5.93 always writes a DOI as https://doi.org/.... Handbook 5.96 usually drops http:// and https:// from ordinary permalinks and URLs — which is why Victor starts at www.nytimes.com. News stories almost never have a DOI, so the practical close is a permalink or a cleaned article URL.

Name the database as a second container (ProQuest, Nexis Uni, Gale OneFile: News), then give that database's permalink — not login.ezproxy... and not a session token. EBSCO and ProQuest are vendors; the product name on the record is the container. If the HTML copy has no on-screen pages but the record lists A1 or A1+, keep those pages in the first container and omit them from the in-text citation, the way the official Frycek Academic OneFile model works for a magazine. A paywalled nytimes.com URL still belongs in the entry: the URLs advice post says documentation vouches that you were there, even when readers need their own login. Strip tracking parameters. Do not substitute a URL shortener. Add Accessed Day Mon. Year only when the living page has no date, looks likely to move, or your instructor requires it — a dated Victor or Pfanner line does not need it.

If you are citing a historical clipping that a website retyped, the website-container post says the site is the container you opened; original newspaper facts can go in the optional-element slot, as the Burlington Free Press line does. Do not pretend you held the 1931 paper if you opened the UVM transcription.

Editorials, Op-Eds, Reviews, Columns, and Letters

The editorial post gives three official forms. A signed editorial board piece does not need the word Editorial. An unsigned editorial can take Editorial as a supplemental element. An op-ed — an opinion piece by someone who is not an editor of the paper — can take Op-ed. The column-title post says a regular column name is optional when the piece already has a title; if you include it, put it in the middle optional-element slot after the headline. When the column title is the work's title, omit the quotation marks and cite the column name as the source, as Schulman does.

A letter to the editor follows the same periodical pattern. If you need readers to see that it is a letter, add Letter as a supplemental element at the end, the way Editorial and Op-ed work above. A labelled template is Patel, R. "Headline of the Letter." *The Newspaper Title*, 16 Mar. 2017, p. A18. Letter. Do not invent a letter that was never printed.

Official Magazine Examples

The magazine pattern is the same core-element template with a magazine as the container. Deresiewicz is the official "article on a website" example on the citations-by-format page and the online-works page. Karasik is the official untitled print-magazine image on that same page. Kuperberg, already quoted above, is the official New Yorker column.

The official Deresiewicz URL keeps MLA's line-break compression (thecreative without a hyphen) and omits https://. Reproduce the Style Center string; do not "fix" the path. A monthly print magazine that prints only a month and year uses that shorter date — a labelled template is Deresiewicz, W. "Article Title." *The Magazine Title*, Jan. 2015, pp. 40-45. Do not invent a 2026 Scientific American or Time cover story to fill the slot.

In-Text Citations for News Stories

The in-text overview (Handbook 6.3–6.30) starts with whatever comes first in the Works Cited entry. For Victor, that is the journalist's surname. For the Economist leader, that is a shortened headline. Add a page, line, or other locator only when the copy has one and the passage is longer than a single page. Do not invent paragraph numbers for an unpaginated nytimes.com story. Do not add a year — that is APA.

Soloski is one print page, so the in-text form is (Soloski), not (Soloski 5). The one-page post uses a one-page World review as the model and keys it as (Review). Online stories with no pages take the author or short title only. If you quote a multi-page print story or a paginated PDF, add the page in parentheses. A year in the parentheses belongs on the APA newspaper page.

MLA Newspaper vs APA 7 and Chicago

The same New York Times URL is a different sentence in each style. MLA title-cases the headline, wraps it in quotation marks, italicizes the paper, writes 16 Mar. 2017, and usually drops https://. APA 7 sentence-cases the headline, italicizes the paper, writes (2017, March 16), keeps https://, and cites (Victor, 2017) with a year and a comma. Chicago Notes-Bibliography puts the same facts in a footnote and often skips the bibliography line. Do not mix the three on one Works Cited page.

Where to Find Each Fact

• Byline: under the headline on the paper site, or in the database record. If the only credit is Associated Press or Reuters, start with the headline.
• Date: the dateline or "Published" stamp, not "Updated" and not the day you saved the PDF.
• Edition and section: the print masthead and folio line. Web copies often drop both; do not invent them.
• Pages: the folio (A1, A28). Online stories usually have none. Database HTML can still inherit A1 from the record.
• Publication name: the masthead, not the domain alone and not a section brand such as "Times Opinion."
• URL or permalink: the article permalink with tracking parameters stripped. Drop https:// unless your instructor requires the scheme. Prefer a database permalink over a campus proxy.
• Access date: only when the living page has no date, looks unstable, or the syllabus requires it.

Related guides

• Cite a newspaper in APA 7
• Cite a newspaper in Chicago
• Cite a journal article in MLA
• Cite a website in MLA
• Cite a source with no author
• Cite a source with no date
• Library databases
• MLA vs Chicago
• APA vs MLA
• Works Cited, defined