There are many reasons you might need to do research in a newspaper archive. You might be interested in how an event was reported in London versus Glasgow vs New York. You might be interested in when a term like ‘Covid’ or ‘Black Lives Matter’ first appeared in the newspaper media. You might be fact-checking or researching an article you’re writing, or you might just want to read more so you can become a better writer.
The newspaper archive that the University of Sunderland Library subscribes to is called Newsstream. This resource contains online full-text access to over 600 UK regional, national and broadsheet newspapers as well as international press such as The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Bangkok Post, South China Morning Post, and the Jerusalem Post. Coverage goes back as far as January 1982 to the present day for some titles, although this varies by publication.
Remember, you might also be interested in how the news is reported on the TV and radio, and you can use Box of Broadcasts to do the same types of searching as you can in Newsstream for print media.
Here is a 10 minute video tutorial which walks you through how to access Newsstream: