For me, this is the most baffling part of citing things in APA. I mean, I get why it works the way it does, but only because I have to explain it ten times a day. Maybe it’s just Stockholm syndrome. Probably. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
For most people, an online source is an online source: You use a search engine and you click on a link–they’re all webpages. The APA differentiates different kinds of webpages, though, and not just in the obvious ways that you might expect. Here I want to focus on two types of online sources:
- Online news sources that are associated with a physical publication
- Online news sources that are not associated with a physical publication.
What’s the difference?
Well… the difference is whether or not there’s a physical publication or not. It kinda does what it says on the tin. The reason for the difference, though, probably has to do with how news media has changed and adapted to digital technologies. Consider four examples. You have a physical newspaper: The South Lake Tahoe Gazette. You have a physical newspaper that also has an associated website: The Los Angeles Times. You have mostly-editorial publications that are only online: Gawker (RIP). And then you have a news source that is only online and does editorials: The Huffington Post. Should The Huffington Post be cited like Gawker or The LA Times? I don’t know, I just work here. Let’s see what the APA says.
General form of a reference entry for a news website without an associated physical publication
Author, A. (Year, Month Day). Italicized title: Sentence case. Publishing Website in Title Case. URL
When you’re putting together your reference entry, you will need the following information:
- Authors
- Full date of publication
- Title of the article
- Title of the website the article is hosted on
- URL
Example
Here is the article “Supreme Court to Decide Trump’s Immunity Claim, Further Delaying Election Subversion Trial” from CNN:
Here’s the information that we will need to create a reference entry:
- Author: John Fritze
- Full date of publication: February 28, 2024
- Title of the article: Supreme Court to Decide Trump’s Immunity Claim, Further Delaying Election Subversion Trial
- Title of the website the article is hosted on: CNN
- URL: https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/28/politics/trump-supreme-court-immunity/index.html
If we plug that into the general template from above, we get this:
Fritze, J. (2024, February 28). Supreme Court to decide Trump’s immunity claim, further delaying election subversion trial. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/28/politics/trump-supreme-court-immunity/index.html
General form of a reference entry for a news website with an associated physical publication
Author, A. (Year, Month Day). Article title: Sentence case but not italicized. Publishing Website/Publication in Title Case. URL
- Authors
- Full date of publication
- Title of the article
- Title of the website the article is hosted on
- URL
Example
Here is the article “Traveling to Tahoe? Driving Conditions Could Be ‘Impossible’ as Blizzard Targets Sierra” from the San Francisco Chronicle:
Here’s the information that we will need to create a reference entry:
- Author: Michael Cabanatuan
- Full date of publication: February 27, 2024
- Title of the article: Traveling to Tahoe? Driving Conditions Could Be ‘Impossible’ as Blizzard Targets Sierra
- Title of the website the article is hosted on: San Francisco Chronicle
- URL: https://www.sfchronicle.com/weather/article/tahoe-sierra-blizzard-driving-travel-conditions-18689836.php
If we plug that into the general template from the top of the page, we get this:
Cabanatuan, M. (2024, February 27). Traveling to Tahoe? Driving conditions could be ‘impossible’ as blizzard targets Sierra. San Francisco Chronicle. https://www.sfchronicle.com/weather/article/tahoe-sierra-blizzard-driving-travel-conditions-18689836.php
So, the difference between how the two different sources are referenced is pretty small. For news sites with an associated physical publication, italicize the publication but not the article title. For news sites without an associated physical publication, italicize the article title, but not the hosting website.
Citing an online news source in your paper
For both kinds of news sources, the format is the same, and you can use either a narrative citation or a parenthetical citation.
Narrative citation: “According to Fritz (2024), the Supreme Court’s decision is a net positive for Donald Trump.”
Parenthetical citation: “Conditions on Highway 50 for the weekend of March 2, 2024 will be treacherous (Cabanatuan, 2024).”