Using magazine and news articles in your school research paper adds variety to your bibliography. You can easily find these types of articles online, making them great candidates for your notes-biblio style paper. Bringing a full-length book to print takes time. The peer review and publishing process can delay journal articles, too. By contrast, magazines are usually published at least monthly and newspapers daily or weekly. Online articles are published quickly as well.
Citing Magazine Articles
Creating bibliographical entries for your magazine articles is simple. Just keep in mind the nine basic elements you’ll gather during your research phase. Format magazine articles the same way as you created your journal article entries. One big difference is the way you format dates and page numbers.
Place the title of the article within quotation marks and italicize the title of the magazine. You do not need to include page numbers, but you do need the full date.
Example
Fitzpatrick, Alex. “Everything You Need to Know About 5G.” Time Magazine, May 23, 2019.
If you accessed the article online, add the URL. If you feel the readers’ comments are relevant to your paper, format them the same way as comments on blog posts.
Notes-Biblio Entries for Newspaper Articles
You may cite newspaper articles in your notes section or weave them into the text of your research paper. Like social media posts and blogs, you include a bibliography citation only if you feel the articles contribute to your argument.
- If you create an entry in your bibliography, you may omit “The” in the newspaper’s title. Also, omit page numbers.
- Include a URL for newspaper articles accessed online. If you accessed the article in a database, include that name.
- As with magazine articles, enclose the title of the article in quotation marks, and italicize the name of the newspaper.
- Include the date.
Example
Roan, Shair. “Revising the Book on Mental Illness; Experts Call for Listing Binge Eating and Gambling as Official Disorders, but not Sex Addiction or Obesity.” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2010.
Relevant and Recent Research
Using news articles adds relevance to your research paper. Mix up your research with a variety of sources, both in print and online. However, do not rely too heavily on lighter sources such as magazine and newspaper articles. Using print books and journal articles provides substance to your research paper, even if you are accessing those sources through online databases or the Web.