Old News is Good News for MyHeritage as it launches new historical newspaper site!

Old News is Good News: Prepare to be amazed and overwhelmed, folks, because MyHeritage has just rolled out OldNews™, the greatest resource for all things historically newspapery. That’s right, in a world where yesterday’s news is typically fish wrap, MyHeritage decided to zag where everyone else zigs, launching a website that’s essential for genealogy and family history research.

Imagine a place where you can get lost in hundreds of millions of pages of historical newspapers from around the globe. Think of it as the ultimate hide-and-seek playground for genealogists, researchers, and history buffs who get a kick out of unearthing stories about people and events that time forgot. And the best part? At launch, OldNews is stocked with so much content that you’ll be spending hours learning more about how your ancestors lived their everyday lives.

But wait, there’s more! OldNews isn’t just about quantity; it’s about quality, too. From the illustrious pages of major international dailies to the humble musings of small-town gazettes, this website has got it all. It’s like a buffet for your brain, where you can gorge on a diverse range of high-quality publications until your historical hunger is sated.

And because it is MyHeritage, they’re not just transferring all their old newspaper content to OldNews; they’re also adding new, unique content that’s sure to make history nerds swoon. That’s right, more old news to brighten your day!

Accessibility? You betcha. OldNews is ready to serve up a slice of the past whether you’re on desktop or mobile web browser, making it the perfect companion for those moments when you absolutely, positively need to know what was happening in the world on a random day in 1885.

So there you have it, folks. OldNews: because the past is a present we give to ourselves, and MyHeritage just can’t wait to see us unwrap it.

Old News is Good News: The Scoop on OldNews™

Historical newspapers are a treasure trove of stories that are rich in detail. In the past, you didn’t need to be famous to appear in the newspaper; anyone could be found in them, which makes them of tremendous value to genealogists, historians, and educators. Moving forward, OldNews.com will serve as MyHeritage’s focal point for historical newspapers. This release is just the beginning; we have an incredible pipeline of additional content and features, and ambitious plans to make OldNews the number one online repository of international historical newspapers beyond the English-speaking world.

Old News is Good News: Integration with MyHeritage

Existing MyHeritage users can log in to OldNews.com with their MyHeritage account credentials, and new users registering via OldNews.com can use the same login credentials to access MyHeritage. OldNews.com supports Two-Factor Authentication, for enhanced security.

Old News is Good News: Newspaper content on OldNews.com

OldNews.com offers a wide range of publications from local, national, and international news, with extensive coverage of the 1800s and 1900s. At launch, the website includes newspapers from across the U.S., Canada, U.K., Austria, Germany, Czechia, the Netherlands, and Australia. Millions of newspaper pages are added each month, and content from additional countries will be added in the future. The OldNews.com website is available in 11 languages: English, French, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. More newspapers in some of these languages will be added soon.

The new content on OldNews.com was scanned using best-in-class optical character recognition (OCR) technology and enhanced with sophisticated algorithms developed in-house by MyHeritage. The website also offers optimized performance through a new technical implementation where the content is served from a Content Distribution Network, through a point of presence closest to the user. This means that users from all over the world can access OldNews.com at an extremely fast speed.

Old News is Good News: How to use OldNews.com

To get started, visit OldNews.com. If you already have a MyHeritage account, click “Log in” on the top right of the page and use the same credentials you use to log in to MyHeritage. If you don’t have an account yet, no worries! You can search OldNews.com anonymously, and you can create an account later to view the newspapers you’ve found.

At the heart of OldNews.com is an easy-to-use search engine that enables anyone to quickly and effortlessly find information on a person, topic, or event. Enter the search terms in the form on the website’s home page and click the green “Search” button. Entering the year of publication is optional. If you enter it, the search will match the year exactly, but once you type in a year you can click on the year field and broaden the year range.

Old News is Good News: Looking ahead

Additional browsing capabilities and new features such as saving newspaper articles to your family tree on MyHeritage will be added to OldNews.com in the coming months.

OldNews.com will soon include structured obituary records extracted from newspaper pages. These records will also be available on MyHeritage and will be matched to the family trees of MyHeritage users, who will receive new discoveries on a regular basis through new Newspaper Match notifications. Additionally, billions of names extracted from the new newspaper content on OldNews.com will soon be published on MyHeritage and OldNews.com.

Old News is Good News: Cost

OldNews.com is a subscription-based service. Anyone can start a 7-day free trial to explore the content before committing to an annual OldNews.com Pro subscription, which costs $99/year with 25% off the first year.

Old News is Good News: MyHeritage Omni subscription

All the OldNews.com content is also accessible with MyHeritage’s new Omni subscription plan. The Omni plan is a one-stop shop for genealogy and a superset of MyHeritage’s Complete plan. It includes full access to all features and content on MyHeritage, available with the Complete plan, plus all newspapers on OldNews.com, a Geni.com Pro plan, all 2,138 genealogy and DNA webinars on Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and unlimited photo scanning using MyHeritage’s Reimagine photo app.

The new Omni plan gives family history enthusiasts of all levels highly affordable access to a vast range of family tree tools, historical records, historical newspapers, innovative technologies, and expert knowledge to help propel their research to new heights. This combines many of the best tools and services in the genealogy industry into one subscription plan that is much more affordable than when purchased separately. New subscribers who purchase the MyHeritage Omni plan will save nearly 50% compared to what these plans would cost individually on MyHeritage, OldNews.com, Geni.com, FamilyTreeWebinars.com, and the Reimagine mobile app. Omni is initially available as an annual subscription.

Existing MyHeritage subscribers with other plans such as Data or Complete can upgrade to Omni for an affordable price. MyHeritage subscribers with an active Complete or Data plan will continue to enjoy uninterrupted access to all historical newspapers that were available on MyHeritage prior to the launch of OldNews.com, at no extra cost. However, an upgrade to Omni will be required to view newspaper images for new newspaper content that did not exist on MyHeritage prior to the launch of OldNews.com. MyHeritage users will have the opportunity to upgrade to Omni when trying to view a newspaper image on OldNews.com that was indexed on MyHeritage. We will soon add this option to other areas of the MyHeritage website.

Old News is Good News: Explore OldNews.com today

Historical newspapers contain a wealth of information and provide an unparalleled level of detail about the past. Whether you’re looking to discover fascinating stories about your ancestors and the wider historical context of their lives, or want to gain deeper insights into watershed moments in history, OldNews.com is a vital resource and we’re excited to present it to the genealogy community. We invite you to explore OldNews.com and stay tuned for exciting updates coming soon.

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