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"The Professors' News Desk is a splendid accomplishment. HUA has done us all proud. We professors can continue to suggest various things to read but I hope that this terrible war will encourage students to do something which, if polls are correct, they do not do very often, that is, to read a serious newspaper or newspapers every day. Journalism really is the first draft of history. There is no substitute for reading the news reports and various opinion columns. Most of the serious people involved in foreign policy making in this country across the political spectrum, and a very large number of historians as well, read either The New York Times or the Washington Post or both everyday.  A lot of those people read them in print. As students, you have the opportunity to read both of them for free online via the McKeldin Library website. 

There are other excellent websites but the Times and the Post, remain a baseline of, on the whole, reliable facts and evidence. Given the amount of lies and conspiracy theories available on the internet, it's important for History majors in particular, to pay attention to these leading institutions of American journalism. They are not perfect but the journalists at those papers need to face tough questions from editors, something that is less the case from other sources.

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1.  The daily New York Times is available here.

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2.  The Washington Post is available via the McKeldin library website. See this link.

 

3.  People who are focused on economics read The Wall Street Journal as well, but it is behind a paywall, and, as far as I could tell, not available via McKeldin.

 

If you read a foreign language, then reading about the war in major European papers is also valuable, and good for improving your reading knowledge of that language, though to do that you would need to have an online subscription."

- Professor Herf