read before the American Historical Association in Washington on
December 29, 1908; printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1909.

NEWSPAPERS AS HISTORICAL SOURCES

The impulse of an American writer in justifying the use of newspapers as
historical materials is to adopt an apologetic tone. It is somewhat
curious that such should be the case, for newspapers satisfy so many
canons of historical evidence. They are contemporary, and, being written
without knowledge of the end, cannot bolster any cause without making a
plain showing of their intent. Their object is the relation of daily
events; and if their relation is colored by honest or dishonest
partisanship, this is easily discernible by the critic from the internal
evidence and from an easily acquired knowledge of a few external facts.
As the journals themselves say, their aim is to print the news; and much
of the news is present politics. Moreover, the newspaper itself, its
news and editorial columns, its advertisements, is a graphic picture of
society.

When Aulard, in his illuminating criticism of Taine, writes that the
journals are a very important source of the history of the French
Revolution, provided they are revised and checked by one another, the
statement seems in accordance with the canons of historical writing; and
when he blames Taine for using two journals only and neglecting ten
others which he names, the impression on the mind is the same as if
Taine were charged with the neglect of evidence of another class. One
would hardly attempt to justify Taine by declaring that all journals are
inaccurate, partisan, and dishonest, and that the omission was a merit,
not a defect. Leaving out of account the greater size and diffuseness of
the modern journal, the dictum of Aulard would seem to apply to any
period of history.

Why is it then that some American students fall consciously or
unconsciously into an apologetic tone when they attempt to justify the
use of newspapers as historical sources? I suppose it is because of the
attitude of cultivated society to the newspaper of to-day. Society calls
the ordinary newspaper sensational and unreliable; and, if neither, its
accounts are so diffuse and badly proportioned as to weary the seeker
after the facts of any given transaction. Despite the disfavor into
which the American newspaper has fallen in certain circles, I suspect
that it has only exaggerated these defects, and that the journals of
different