MLA 9th edition
How to cite a newspaper article in MLA 9th edition
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 MLA, at a glance
Author Last, First. “Headline of the Article.” Newspaper Name, Day Month Year, url.example.com/article.
Whitcombe, Dara. “Universities Rethink the Essay after a Year of Chatbots.” Riverside Herald, 3 Mar. 2024, riversideherald.com/education/essay-rethink.
(Whitcombe)
In prose: Whitcombe reports that four departments dropped the take-home essay outright.
Whitcombe, Dara. “Universities Rethink the Essay after a Year of Chatbots.” Riverside Herald, 3 Mar. 2024, p. A1.
In text: (Whitcombe A1)
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the works cited builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What MLA 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
- MLA gives a periodical’s name without its initial article, so the container is <em>Riverside Herald</em> rather than <em>The Riverside Herald</em>.
- When the paper is local and its city is not part of its name, add the city in square brackets after the title: <em>Riverside Herald</em> [Riverside, CA].
- An online article has no page numbers, so the parenthetical carries the author’s surname alone. A print article ends with p. B1 or pp. B1–B4 and takes a page in the citation.
- Headlines take MLA title case even when the paper prints them in sentence case or in all capitals. Silently correcting the capitalization is expected here.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element MLA 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 works cited entry
Arrange those details in the MLA order: Author Last, First. “Headline of the Article.” Newspaper Name, Day Month Year, url.example.com/article.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as (Whitcombe) — or work the same reference into your sentence as Whitcombe reports that four departments dropped the take-home essay outright..
Check it against the exceptions
MLA gives a periodical’s name without its initial article, so the container is <em>Riverside Herald</em> rather than <em>The Riverside Herald</em>.
MLA RULES
The conventions behind every MLA entry
MLA Handbook (9th ed.) is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the works cited is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the works cited is sorted, and where MLA entries most often go wrong — are collected on the MLA 9th edition 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 MLA 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 MLA?
MLA gives a periodical’s name without its initial article, so the container is <em>Riverside Herald</em> rather than <em>The Riverside Herald</em>.
What else catches people out here?
When the paper is local and its city is not part of its name, add the city in square brackets after the title: <em>Riverside Herald</em> [Riverside, CA].
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 works cited at once.
