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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: McRae, Michael
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.11866
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author McRae, Michael
author_facet McRae, Michael
contents This paper describes the construction of a large-scale corpus of historical wire articles from U.S. Southern newspapers, spanning 1960-1975 and covering multiple wire services (e.g., Associated Press, United Press International, Newspaper Enterprise Association). Unlike prior work that focuses primarily on front-page content, the corpus captures wire-sourced articles across the entire newspaper, offering broader insight into mid-century Southern news coverage. The analysis incorporates both raw OCR text and a version processed through an LLM-based text correction pipeline designed to reduce OCR noise and improve suitability for quantitative text analysis. Multiple versions of the same wire dispatch are retained, allowing for the study of editorial differences in language and framing across newspapers. Articles are classified by wire service, enabling comparative analysis of editorial patterns across agencies. Together, these features provide a detailed perspective on how Southern newspapers transmitted national and international news during a transformative period in American history.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_11866
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Southern Newswires: A Large-Scale Study of Mid-Century Wire Content Beyond the Front Page
McRae, Michael
Computation and Language
This paper describes the construction of a large-scale corpus of historical wire articles from U.S. Southern newspapers, spanning 1960-1975 and covering multiple wire services (e.g., Associated Press, United Press International, Newspaper Enterprise Association). Unlike prior work that focuses primarily on front-page content, the corpus captures wire-sourced articles across the entire newspaper, offering broader insight into mid-century Southern news coverage. The analysis incorporates both raw OCR text and a version processed through an LLM-based text correction pipeline designed to reduce OCR noise and improve suitability for quantitative text analysis. Multiple versions of the same wire dispatch are retained, allowing for the study of editorial differences in language and framing across newspapers. Articles are classified by wire service, enabling comparative analysis of editorial patterns across agencies. Together, these features provide a detailed perspective on how Southern newspapers transmitted national and international news during a transformative period in American history.
title Southern Newswires: A Large-Scale Study of Mid-Century Wire Content Beyond the Front Page
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.11866