Newspapers

Coverage for the Tallahassee Democrat is divided between two different databases. This is very common with newspaper databases since licensing historical news content is often separate from licensing contemporary news coverage.

It is important to recognize that newspapers are not public services; they are businesses that sell their product and provide advertisers with access to a target audience. Historically, many newspapers companies only catered to audiences of mostly of white, middle- and upper-class readers. As a result, members of marginalized groups often maintain their own newspapers to provide news and advertising to their communities. There have been many such newspapers in Florida, catering to Black, Latinx, Jewish, and other reading communities.

The Seminole Tribe of Florida also maintains a newspaper, the Seminole Tribune, published in Hollywood, Florida.

Digitized newspapers are spread out across multiple databases, some of which FSU Libraries pays for, others are made available for free. Sometimes even the same newspaper title can be split among two or more databases, with older dates in one resource and newer dates in another! Pay attention to the newspaper titles and date ranges provided by the following databases.

Keep in mind that newspaper coverage about Florida doesn't have to be published in Florida. In fact, there were very few Florida newspapers until the mid-nineteenth century. Consider looking in other important newspapers of the time for mentions of Florida. For example, during the colonial period, you might find important coverage of Florida in the newspapers of Charleston, South Carolina; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; London, England; or in major population centers of the Caribbean like Cuba or Jamaica.