Newspapers
Newspapers are one of the most enjoyable and most difficult of genealogical sources. Faced with so much of the everyday particularity of the past, it is virtually impossible to confine oneself to biographical data; again and again research is sidetracked by simple curiosity. In addition to this, the endemic imprecision of family information means that it is almost always necessary to search a wide range of dates.
A sustained search for genealogical information in original newspapers is, as a result, extremely time consuming. If the efficient use of research time is a priority, newspapers are certainly not the place to start.
With this proviso in mind, it must be added that the destruction of so many Irish records in 1922 gives a disproportionate importance to Irish newspapers and that, when newspapers do produce information, it can be extremely rich. Events are reported virtually as they happen, within a few weeks at most, and the reports have an authority and accuracy which is hard to match, even making all necessary allowances for journalistic errors. Nor is it now any longer always necessary to search the original papers themselves, since so many indexes are now available.
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