Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
How to cite a newspaper article in Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
News sources need a full date rather than just a year, and the online version of an article rarely carries the page numbers the print version had.
THE FORMAT
A newspaper article in Chicago, at a glance
Last, First. “Headline.” Newspaper Name, Month Day, Year. URL.
Vance, Dorothy. “City Halts Sale of Riverside Depot.” Calder Evening Herald, March 3, 2023. https://www.calderherald.com/riverside-depot.
1. Dorothy Vance, “City Halts Sale of Riverside Depot,” Calder Evening Herald, March 3, 2023, https://www.calderherald.com/riverside-depot.
In prose: 5. Vance, “City Halts Sale.”
Calder Evening Herald. “Depot Sale Collapses after Council Vote.” March 4, 2023. https://www.calderherald.com/depot-sale-collapses.
In text: 2. “Depot Sale Collapses after Council Vote,” Calder Evening Herald, March 4, 2023, https://www.calderherald.com/depot-sale-collapses.
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the bibliography builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What Chicago needs from a newspaper article
Elements to collect
- Journalist’s name
- Full date of publication — year, month, and day
- Headline of the article
- Name of the newspaper
- Page number for a print article, or the URL for an online one
Rules specific to this entry
- Chicago omits page numbers for newspapers, because the same story appears on different pages in different editions. The date is the locator.
- News items are often cited in the notes alone and left out of the bibliography. List them when a paper is a substantial source for your argument, and say so in your first note if the practice needs explaining.
- For a US paper whose title does not name its city, add the city in italics as part of the title. For a paper published outside the US, put the city in roman parentheses after the title instead.
- An unsigned article has no author: begin the note with the headline and open the bibliography entry with the newspaper’s name.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Chicago needs for a newspaper article: Journalist’s name; Full date of publication — year, month, and day; Headline of the article; Name of the newspaper.
Build the bibliography entry
Arrange those details in the Chicago order: Last, First. “Headline.” Newspaper Name, Month Day, Year. URL.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as 1. Dorothy Vance, “City Halts Sale of Riverside Depot,” Calder Evening Herald, March 3, 2023, https://www.calderherald.com/riverside-depot. — or work the same reference into your sentence as 5. Vance, “City Halts Sale.”.
Check it against the exceptions
Chicago omits page numbers for newspapers, because the same story appears on different pages in different editions. The date is the locator.
Chicago RULES
The conventions behind every Chicago entry
The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.) is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the bibliography is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the bibliography is sorted, and where Chicago entries most often go wrong — are collected on the Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography) guide.
The same newspaper article in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Chicago and newspaper articles
What if the newspaper article has no author?
Move the title into the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word of that title — ignoring an initial “A”, “An” or “The”. In the text, use a shortened form of the title where the author name would go.
What do I need before I can cite a newspaper article?
Journalist’s name, Full date of publication — year, month, and day, Headline of the article, and the rest of the elements listed above. News sources need a full date rather than just a year, and the online version of an article rarely carries the page numbers the print version had.
Is there anything unusual about a newspaper article in Chicago?
Chicago omits page numbers for newspapers, because the same story appears on different pages in different editions. The date is the locator.
What else catches people out here?
News items are often cited in the notes alone and left out of the bibliography. List them when a paper is a substantial source for your argument, and say so in your first note if the practice needs explaining.
Can I reformat this newspaper article in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole bibliography at once.
