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 ninth-edition 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. The leftover-eighth-edition-banner posts on newspaper sections (7 March 2017), initial articles (17 April 2019), editions (5 September 2016), editorials (8 March 2017), news agencies (29 February 2016), agency history (15 November 2017), unsigned website articles (20 December 2019), retyped clippings (12 November 2019), one-page sources (3 July 2018), column titles (3 January 2018), and access dates (29 December 2016) still say they relate to the eighth edition. Quote their official strings; apply ninth-edition 5.84, 5.93, 5.96, and 5.111 when the banner and the handbook disagree.

That title sentence is why The New York Times keeps The in both your prose and the Works Cited list. The leftover-eighth-edition 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, and do not copy leftover-Purdue-drops-The from the OWL periodicals page. 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 (15 June 2017). Pfanner is the official example on the leftover-eighth-edition initial-article post. Soloski is the print example on the leftover-eighth-edition newspaper-sections post. The unsigned Economist leader is the official no-byline periodical example on the leftover-eighth-edition unsigned-website-article post. Opened on 14 October 2026, leftover-Pfanner-rendezvous-now-archive is the live host change: rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com now redirects to archive.nytimes.com/rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/.... Quote the official Style Center URL if that is the version you are documenting. If you opened the archive host, cite the URL you saw.

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. Do not invent a 2026 Times or Washington Post story to replace these official strings.

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 leftover-eighth-edition Style Center news-agency post is explicit. Cite the version you actually opened. The leftover-eighth-edition 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, Purdue OWL's periodicals page adds the city in square brackets after the title. Use Purdue's real teaching examples below, not an invented local paper. Those Purdue lines are leftover-Purdue-drops-The: they write Washington Post and New York Times without the article. For a ninth-edition paper, restore The when the masthead uses it. 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. The live Tribune leftover-editorial page, opened 14 October 2026, still prints Published: November 21, 2016, even though it was Updated: August 18, 2019. Cite 21 Nov. 2016. 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 leftover-eighth-edition 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 leftover-eighth-edition 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. Purdue OWL writes a local jump page as p. LZ01 or p. A11. University library guides following MLA 9 write a jump story as the first page plus a plus sign (p. A1+). That is a labelled pattern, 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, Access Dates, and Defunct URLs

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. The leftover-eighth-edition access-dates post still cites eighth-edition pages 50–53. The ninth-edition defunct-URL post (21 November 2017) points to 5.111 instead.

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. The live database page-range HTML still wraps leftover-Frycek-sid-space after sid=. Close that space in your paper. 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 leftover-eighth-edition 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. Opened on 14 October 2026, that UVM URL still resolved. Do not pretend you held the 1931 paper if you opened the UVM transcription.

If the URL later dies, the ninth-edition defunct-URL post is the current rule. You may keep the original URL you consulted. If you later recover the story on the Wayback Machine, cite the archive version you opened and name the original site. Bluestone is the official worked case — a 19 March 2015 Gawker news story, not a fabricated clipping.

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

The leftover-eighth-edition 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. Opened on 14 October 2026, leftover-Tribune-editorial-404 is the live URL change: the official Style Center path www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-fake-news-facebook-edit-1120-md-20161118-story.html now 404s, and the live HTML of that post still wraps leftover-Tribune-www-space after com/. The same editorial still lives at www.chicagotribune.com/2016/11/21/how-to-tell-truth-from-fiction-in-the-age-of-fake-news/, by The Editorial Board, Published November 21, 2016. Quote the official leftover string when you are documenting the Style Center post. If you opened the live Tribune page, cite the URL you saw. The leftover-eighth-edition 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. Purdue OWL puts leftover-Purdue-Editorial-middle ("Of Mines and Men." Editorial. *Wall Street Journal*) in the slot after the headline. The official Style Center unsigned Times editorial puts Editorial at the end. Follow the Style Center for a ninth-edition paper. A labelled letter 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. Opened on 14 October 2026, leftover-Deresiewicz-01-space is still in the live HTML: a wrap space after archive/2015/01/, plus thecreative without a hyphen. Close the leftover space in your paper; keep the official thecreative compression. 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 to the-creative. 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 leftover-eighth-edition 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. The live Tribune leftover-editorial page still publishes 21 November 2016.
• 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." Keep The when the masthead uses it. Do not copy leftover-Purdue-drops-The.
• 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. Close leftover wrapping spaces (com/ news, 01/ the-death, sid= AONE) in your paper.
• Access date: only when the living page has no date, looks unstable, or the syllabus requires it. Ninth-edition handbook section is 5.111, not leftover eighth-edition pages 50–53.
• Defunct URL: keep the URL you consulted, or cite the Wayback version you opened, as the official Bluestone pair shows. leftover-Tribune-editorial-404 is the newspaper case of the same rule.

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
• How to cite a newspaper article in MLA
• Works Cited, defined