Newspapers Reviews 293

There are limited Australian Newspapers on this site. And it does not return all information eg we placed Birth notices in THe Age in August 1982 and July 1985 - these were not found by a search of our surname on Newspapers.com. I took up the 7 day Free Trial, realised that it was not providing what I wanted - limited Australian Newspapers and inaccurate searches so I cancelled my subscription. Unfortunately the inadvertently hit the link again and I was locked into a subscription. So I took out the basic - what a waste of money searches would reveal finds but to see them I had to upgrade! If you are in Australia use Trove - it is free! We have been subscribers to The Age for nearly 50 years - I deserve better than this!

Disappointing after subscribing to Ancestry's All Access membership. Access to Newspapers was supposed to included but they want to charge more money "Available with Publisher Extra". What a joke! I haven't been able to find any relevant research because everytime it wants me to pay more money.

They are actually much worse than 1 star.
The real problem is the automatic renewal, which cannot be cancelled except by cancelling then renewing one's card with a brand new number.
"Go to Account details" and "Help Center" lead to "Error 1020 access denied. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks." This despite the address line clearly showing that the connection is secure. I have screenshots of that and the error messages.
It is really protecting itself from irate customers wishing to cancel the service.

Signed up for 1 month at Cdn $10.45. Searched a few items but they wanted additional money to see the item. Totally useless and a money grab. I will complain to my credit card company.

Newspapers.com is a RIP OFF. I tried to call them and write them. Never returned my calls/mgs to cancel. Today they charged my bank $74.90 !!! I have been trying for 6 days..phone says 'we will try and get back to you in a timely manner'......NOT ! CROOKS. I tried to get on the website to cancel but lost my PW....trying to get their help so I could cancel. NO LUCK............stay away from this site. I am out $74.90. I am furious !

I was excited about adding Newspaper.com to my ancestry project. But, I'm going to cancel asap before they automatically take my payment. In the past several years I have just ignored the fact that I have been unable to actually read, clip and save articles. It's an absolute joke. In that entire time I have only been able to access maybe 2 articles. Obits to be exact. I'm sick of being excited only to have that white box pop up informing me that I must upgrade and pay $29.95 to view it. Crooks. Goodbye NewspaperWeStealYourMoney.com!! Good riddance.

Newspapers.com is one of my all time favorite sites. It's been a veritable genealogical gold mine and helped me flush out so many lines and constantly provides leads that I never would have discovered any where else.It's an all around well balanced site.

Some archives have very patchy collections, or they focus on papers that only affluent members of society subscribed too. I particularly love that they have some small borough papers. Wish the Southern collection was a meatier, as one often needs to visit a university library to read surviving Civil War clippings. So wish they would tap southern university archives, historical societies and gain access to some of their holdings.

Also would like to see some 1880's-1890's German language papers geared towards immigrant settlement areas in NY, and papers that appealed to Irish Immigrants.

It's simple to us, they aren't constantly changing it every other second like Ancestry. The programming is solid and bug free. Site is rarely down. They fix anything that's broken quickly.

You do have to know how to search and be a detective in pairing search terms. Inexperienced users often plug in a few things, and when they don't find anything, give up and write the site off. You definitely have to be willing to patiently wade through a lot of hits, using the surname and pairing it with anything you know about the family, possible locations, talents, interests, professions, nicknames, abbreviations and religion.

My mind happens to work well in conjunction to how the data is organized, so I can find just about everything manned with a name or two, a place and spare time.

I generally begin broadly familiarizing myself with all the people with that surname in a neighborhood/ geographic zone, extracting clippings I suspect might fit based on life span. In doing so, I get a sense of who else is living in the area with the same names and who their family members and jobs were, and which religious or civic organizations they might have belonged to. Then I work inward in tighter and tighter circles, using census data to rule out, or confirm what I can and can't ascribe to the family. You don't always know who you are looking for, unless you rule out who you are not looking for.

I have only a few complaints with the site. For the past 6 months or so, the "find your place" in my hits reset doesn't return to the proper section of the hit column. So I have to count and monitor my place on the list.

That's annoying if you are looking through 800 or more hits. I wish they would fix it. It used to bounce you back to the exact correct spot on the list, so all you needed to do was scroll down to the next un viewed clipping beneath it. Now it appears to bounce back to spots all over the column of hits. A color distinction would help.

I dislike that clipped obituaries, and marriage records from Newspaper saved to my private unsearchable Ancestry tree are now being indexed and sent out to other users researching the individual, after I have
paid to clip them and matched the clippings to the individual in my private tree. Your movements inform their software. I view that as a gross invasion of my personal privacy and it concerns me.

You're telling people who that individual's living relatives and minor children are, where they live and describing the individuals rolls in the family, Yes, its info in the public domain, but in the past someone would have had to visit a library & wade through microfilm to find that obituary. Or they would have had to pay for a subscription to Newspapers.com or another historic news site, and thought to look for it themselves. I will never place an obituary in a paper in the future.

They are now hading out your 10 year old child's full name and directing other researchers to your tree and Newspapers activity. I don't feel that a private tree and what's saved to it should be open to Ancestry company predation. There's no longer a sense of having ones privacy respected, as one's movements between the two sites are being handed out in a way other researches and law enforcement can easily combine to identify who's DNA test that test might be.

Just because you can legal do something like access and republish items in the public domain, doesn't mean that it's a wise or safe to do so, especially if you profess to value customer privacy. You are not saying you extracted the info from user X's locked tree, but you are providing other users with the very information those trees are close to protect against.

Why pay for a subscription to Newspapers.com if they are going to pass out what I paid to clip, labored to find to someone else for free? Clipped info also started appearing on Find a Grave. At least make them pay to see them. I hate the fact that my movements on Newspapers are now informing Ancestry's and Find a Graves' software.

The search feature doesn't seem to provide and boolean capability (e.g., search for 'Smith' AND 'Jones', nor does it seem to provide an 'exact' search - even placing a search phrase in quotes doesn't limit the search to that phrase. Searching for Judy Jones will return articles on Scott Jones.

I generally like newspapers.com, but they make it hard to extract legible clips for your own personal use rather than identifying clips for users on ancestry.com. Additionally if you want to save an extensive article that fills an entire newspaper page (or near entire), the resulting clip quality is very hard to read. The only work around I know is to laboriously make numerous smaller clips. So, finding lots of interesting history but it could be way better.

I signed up and sent them an email wanting to know why almost all reviews were bad? I have never gotten anyone on the phone, no call backs and no email reply. They will ignore you till you go away. I blame Ancestry because they own Newspapers. Lost a customer for life. Poor business.
Update: I sent about 15 emails to newspapers and now they are replying from just shy of a year ago and saying nothing but to email them. Newspapers is a belligerent insult. Ancestry owns them, but does nothing to make newspapers anymore friendly. I will not ever renew newspapers or ancestry.

This website touted an abundance of U.S. locations for newspaper archives, but each location has a VERY limited amount of pages accessible. I spent several hours the first few days searching, only to find two results. Canceled.

I bought a subscription to be able to put articles on Ancestry for future family generations. Anything I found and saved to Ancestry was completely useless. It was so blurry that it's impossible to read. They call it a thumbnail; and admit it is unreadable. What a rip off. I then tried to print them out; again it was so small it was impossible to read. The articles were completely legible and clear ONLY on the Newspapers website.
Who wants to keep an subscription forever? It feels like a deliberate manipulation. Don't waste your money

As so many others stated, this is a rip-off. I signed up through ancestry.com and there is nothing I research that doesn’t require an upgraded subscription. It also doesn’t define what an upgraded subscription actually delivers. I can’t see any rhyme or reason to the newspapers you can and can’t see. It seems to just be a way to get you to pay even more money. I’m cancelling mine through ancestry before the next renewal.

Do not use this site. First of all, I gave them an email address I rarely use. Upon checking that email, it is loaded with spam, to the tune of 15 to 20 every day, something that I never had before at this email. Next trying to contact them is a joke. No phone or chat support, just email them.
Very disappointed in their communication and unwanted spam.

DO NOT SUBSCRIBE. After paying a LOT of money I found most of the papers required an 'upgraded' membership. They are a HUGE rip off.

I have a 6 month subscription with 3 months left. When I first got the subscription, I was so happy. I was able to get the actual obituaries of my ancestors and other articles. I just happen to check on an ancestor and wanted to share the obituary with family and it is all of a sudden behind an additional pay wall. I'm already paying a subscription fee. This was available with the subscription I had. Now it is not. I feel robbed. I feel gaslit. I'm cancelling my subscription and am recommending folks to never use this service. It's just a money grab.

The basic subscription is worthless and I am not willing to pour any more money into a higher grade subscription. Very little can be accessed with the basic subscription. Save your money.

As close to a scam as you're going to get. Ancestry sells 'Newspapers' packaged with their best(?) package. It's listed as Newspapers (basic). True to form, it appears to be - I haven't compiled exact stats of my own - 90% of the six or seven things I've searched for do not fall into their 'basic' category. Now they want you to spend MORE MONEY. We're not talking about anything special, just a simple obituary from someone from Indiana who died in 1988. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET A SIMPLE COPY OF AN OBIT LIKE THIS. Save your money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You have the option, in theory, to make your clippings private but Newspapers.com is no longer honoring that protection for clippings you have created in the past. Instead, in order to make clippings private, you have delete them and re-clip. I've sent two emails to customer service about this in the past two weeks and no response. I called their phone number and no agents are available.

Very difficult to unsubscribe from.
Will just alert my credit card company to stop payment.