Is Newspapers.com Legit?
What Newspapers.com Does
Newspapers.com is an online subscription service that provides access to digitized historical newspapers and related clippings. It is used by genealogists, researchers, journalists, and hobbyists to search scanned newspaper pages, view article images, and save or download clippings for personal research. The site aggregates titles from local, regional, and national newspapers across multiple countries and offers search features (including OCR-based text search) and browsing by date or location.
Official website: https://www.newspapers.com
Support / contact: See the site’s Help and Contact pages for account and billing help — for example, the help hub is accessible from the main site (Help/Contact links in the footer). If you need direct assistance, use the site’s contact form or support center to get the most up-to-date phone, chat, or email options.
Reviews and Ratings
- General reputation: Widely used and trusted within the genealogy and local-history communities for its breadth of archived newspaper content.
- User feedback: Many users praise the depth of archives and ease of locating historical articles; positive remarks often note article image quality and coverage of obscure local papers.
- Common critical reviews: Across review platforms users report issues related to billing/auto‑renewal, difficulty obtaining refunds, and limitations in search accuracy (OCR errors produce missed or garbled search results).
- Third-party review sites: Aggregated reviews are mixed—numerous positive testimonials about the resource value balanced with repeated complaints about customer service or subscription management on sites such as Trustpilot, SiteJabber and community forums.
Transparency and Registration
- Registration: Newspapers.com is a subscription service; most full-access features require creating an account and paying a recurring fee. The site often offers a free trial period for new users—read the free-trial terms carefully to understand auto-renewal.
- Policies: Terms of service and privacy policy are available on the site and describe how personal data and payment details are handled. Payment is processed via standard online payment processors and subscriptions typically auto-renew unless canceled before the next billing cycle.
- Ownership and branding: Newspapers.com operates as a product associated with established genealogy services; corporate details and legal entity information are provided in site/legal pages.
Red Flags or Complaints
- Billing and cancellations: The most frequent complaints concern unexpected charges after a free trial, difficulty canceling subscriptions, or delays in refunds. Always review trial and cancellation procedures before signing up.
- Search/OCR limitations: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is imperfect—expect missed matches, spelling errors, or poor search hits, especially on older or damaged scans.
- Incomplete coverage: While extensive, the archive is not exhaustive—many local papers or specific dates may be missing.
- Customer service variability: Experiences with support responsiveness and resolution quality vary; for some users, resolving billing disputes has taken multiple contacts.
- Third-party imitators: Be cautious of third-party sites claiming “free” access or downloads—use the official site to avoid scams and copyright issues.
Conclusion
Newspapers.com is a legitimate, widely used archival service with substantial value for historical and genealogical research. It is reputable for the scope of its newspaper collections and standard online features. However, prospective users should be aware of recurring user complaints about billing, cancellation, and OCR/search limitations. To minimize problems: sign up through the official site, read the trial and subscription terms carefully, keep records of transactions, and use the site’s official help/contact channels for support.