How to Cite an Article From a Website in APA 7

To cite an article from a website in APA 7, first decide what the website is. An article from an online newspaper, magazine, or blog takes the periodical format, with the article title in plain text and the publication name in italics. A story on a news site with no print edition, such as CNN or Vox, takes the webpage format, with the title in italics and the site name in plain text.

Both formats use the same four elements: author, date, title, source. What changes is which piece is italicized, and that one choice is where most marks get lost. This guide gives the decision test, ten worked references taken from APA's own examples and university library guides, the in-text forms, and the cases the basic templates skip: no byline, a paywall, a library database, an editorial, a letter to the editor.

The official APA 7 formats for online articles

APA's Publication Manual (7th ed.) puts newspaper, magazine, and blog articles in the periodicals category, Section 10.1. Stories on news websites go under webpages, Section 10.16. APA's Common Reference Examples guide shows one of each, and they are the patterns below.

Online newspaper or magazine article (Section 10.1):

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of article. Name of Newspaper. URL

Blog post (Section 10.1):

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of post. Name of Blog. URL

Article on a news website (Section 10.16):

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of article. Name of Site. URL

The three patterns differ only in which element is italic, which is easy to lose when you copy one from a plain-text handout:

• In a periodical reference (newspaper, magazine, blog), the name of the publication is italic. The article title is plain, in sentence case.
• In a news-website reference, the title of the article is italic, in sentence case. The site name is plain.

Two further rules apply to all three. Give the full date (year, month, day) for newspaper, blog, and news-site articles, since they publish daily; a monthly magazine may only have a year and month. End with the URL and put no period after it.

Newspaper, magazine, blog, or webpage: which format applies

Ask whether the publication has a print edition, or is set up as a magazine or blog. If it does, use the periodical format. If the article sits on a site that only publishes online news, use the webpage format.

APA Style's own guidance turns this into a quick test: could the publication land on your doorstep? The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal all have daily print editions, so their websites count as online newspapers. BBC News, CNN, HuffPost, MSNBC, Reuters, Salon, and Vox have no associated daily or weekly paper, so APA treats their stories as webpages on a news website. The Lynn University Library APA guide draws the same line: the newspaper format is for sources that have an associated daily or weekly print newspaper, and the webpage format is for online news sources such as BBC News, HuffPost, CNN, and Salon.

When you cannot tell, read the publication's "About" page. Words like "newspaper," "online newspaper," "magazine," or "online magazine," or an offer of a print subscription, point to the periodical format. A site that describes itself as a news network, a digital outlet, or a news service points to the webpage format.

The last two rows are easy to misfile. A page of news on an organization's own site is a webpage, covered in our APA 7 website citation guide. A research article that happens to be online is a journal article, with volume, issue, pages, and DOI, as shown in how to cite a journal article in APA 7.

Worked examples

Each reference below is copied from APA's examples guide or from a university library guide, so you can check it against the original.

1. Online newspaper article

From APA's examples guide (Section 10.1):

Bernstein, J. (2024, June 3). The man who couldn't stop going to college. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/magazine/benjamin-bolger-college-harvard-yale.html

• Parenthetical: (Bernstein, 2024)
• Narrative: Bernstein (2024)

The article title stays in sentence case and plain text. The newspaper name keeps its own capitalization, including "The."

2. Online magazine article

From APA's examples guide (Section 10.1):

Thomson, J. (2022, September 8). Massive, strange white structures appear on Utah's Great Salt Lake. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/mysterious-mounds-great-salt-lake-utah-explained-mirabilite-1741151

• Parenthetical: (Thomson, 2022)
• Narrative: Thomson (2022)

Newsweek publishes in print, so its website counts as an online magazine. The online version showed no volume or issue number, so the reference has none.

3. Article on a news website

From APA's examples guide (Section 10.16):

Volpe, A. (2024, June 3). How the self-care industry made us so lonely. Vox. https://www.vox.com/even-better/350424/self-care-isolation-loneliness-epidemic

• Parenthetical: (Volpe, 2024)
• Narrative: Volpe (2024)

Compare it with example 1. Same date, same kind of journalism, opposite italics. Vox has no print paper, so the story title is italic and "Vox" is plain.

4. Blog post

From APA's examples guide (Section 10.1):

Rutledge, P. (2024, April 23). Are tweens too young for digital literacy? Dr. Pam: Living With Media. https://www.pamelarutledge.com/are-tweens-too-young-for-digital-literacy/

• Parenthetical: (Rutledge, 2024)
• Narrative: Rutledge (2024)

A blog is treated like a periodical because it publishes dated posts under a standing name. The post title keeps its question mark, and no extra period follows it.

5. Print newspaper article

From APA's examples guide (Section 10.1):

Reynolds, G. (2019, April 9). Different strokes for athletic hearts. The New York Times, D4.

If you read the paper version, the page number (here section D, page 4) takes the place of the URL. When an article jumps to later pages, list them with commas. The Oregon School Library Information System shows A8-A9, A12 for an article that runs across non-consecutive pages.

6. Print magazine article with volume and issue

From APA's examples guide (Section 10.1):

Nicholl, K. (2020, May). A royal spark. Vanity Fair, 62(5), 56–65, 100.

A monthly magazine gets a year and month. The volume number is italic, the issue number in parentheses is not, and the page range uses an en dash.

7. Editorial by an editorial board

From the OSLIS newspaper examples for APA 7:

The Editorial Board. (2020, October 11). Save the planet, win a prize: Rising seas, raging fires, hotter temperatures - and a bit of positivity [Editorial]. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/opinion/prince-william-earthshot-prize.html

• Parenthetical: (The Editorial Board, 2020)

The byline names the board, so the board is the author. The bracketed label [Editorial] goes right after the title. A signed opinion column by one writer takes the ordinary newspaper format with that writer as author and no label.

8. Letter to the editor

From the same OSLIS guide:

Mattick, M. (2010, July 4). Defending the all-American tart [Letter to the editor]. The Register-Guard, G2.

OSLIS's rule: if an article is a letter to the editor or an editorial, note that after the article title in square brackets. For an online letter, swap the page number for the URL.

9. Comment on an online newspaper article

From the same OSLIS guide:

KS in NJ. (2019, January 15). From this article, it sounds like men are figuring something out that women have known forever. I know of many [Comment on the article "How workout buddies can help stave off loneliness"]. The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/2HDToGJ

The commenter's username is the author, written exactly as it appears. The comment itself stands in for the title, up to its first 20 words, and the bracket names the article the comment responds to.

10. Press release on an organization's website

From APA's examples guide (Section 10.4):

American Psychological Association. (2024, April 11). People who use willpower alone to achieve goals, resist temptation, deemed more trustworthy [Press release]. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2024/04/people-who-use-willpower

A press release reads like a news article but is a report from the organization. The title is italic, [Press release] follows it, and no site name appears because the author and the site are the same.

In-text citations for online articles

The in-text citation for any of these formats is the author's surname and the year. You do not add the month and day, even though the reference has them, and the URL never appears in the text. For two authors, join the names with "&" in parentheses and "and" in your sentence; for three or more, give the first surname and "et al." from the first citation on. Our guide to citing multiple authors in APA 7 covers the group-author and same-surname cases.

When you quote an online article directly, you also need a locator, and web articles have no page numbers. Section 8.28 of the manual gives three options, also set out on the Lynn University guide with its example (Weise & McCabe, 2020, para. 5):

1. A paragraph number. Count the paragraphs from the top of the article, even if they are not numbered, and write para. followed by the number: (Bernstein, 2024, para. 7).
2. A heading. If the article has section headings, name the heading: (Volpe, 2024, "The Loneliness Problem" section). Shorten a long heading and put the shortened form in quotation marks.
3. A heading plus a paragraph number. For long articles, count from the heading instead of the top: (Volpe, 2024, "The Loneliness Problem" section, para. 2).

The paragraph numbers and heading in those three citations are placeholders to show the form; use the real ones from your article. For a print article, use the page: (Reynolds, 2019, p. D4). A paraphrase does not need a locator, though the manual encourages one when it would help a reader find the passage in a long piece.

A quotation of 40 words or more becomes a block quotation: start it on a new line, indent the whole block 0.5 in., drop the quotation marks, and put the citation after the final period.

Special cases

Article with no author

Move the title into the author position, before the date. From the OSLIS guide, a newspaper article found in a database:

Secondhand smoke remains a problem for teens, study finds. (2016, January 11). The Washington Post.

In text, use the first few words of the title in title case. An article title goes in quotation marks: ("Secondhand Smoke Remains a Problem," 2016). A news-website story without a byline keeps its italics in text: (How the Self-Care Industry Made Us So Lonely, 2024). Do not write "Anonymous" unless the article is actually signed "Anonymous." Our guide to citing a source with no author in APA 7 has the full rules, including when an organization counts as the author.

Article with no date

Write n.d. in place of the date: (n.d.) in the reference and (Author, n.d.) in text. This is rare for newspaper articles, which almost always carry a date, but common for undated explainers on news sites. Check the byline area and the end of the article before you settle on n.d. A copyright year in the site footer is not a publication date: it covers the whole site, not the article.

Paywalled article

Give the article's own URL, even if readers hit a paywall. APA's examples guide links straight to The New York Times article in example 1, and that site limits free reading.

Some older handouts tell you to give the newspaper's homepage URL instead, so that the link does not break. That advice dates from the 6th edition. APA 7 asks for the URL that goes to the specific article.

Article from a library database

If you read the article in a library database such as ProQuest or Nexis Uni, leave out the database name and the URL. The OSLIS guide puts it this way: when you find a source in a library database, APA states that you do not need to include the database name or URL. The reference ends after the newspaper name, or after the page number if the database gives one. The same reasoning applies to journal articles, and our guide to formatting DOIs and URLs in APA 7 explains when a link belongs in the reference and when it does not.

Article that has been updated

News stories often show a "published" and an "updated" time. Cite the date of the version you read, and if you quote a passage that was changed in an update, the later date is the one that matches your quote. The APA 7 website guide covers the published-versus-updated choice for webpages in more detail.

A retrieval date ("Retrieved October 17, 2025, from") is only for pages designed to change over time, like APA's Worldometer example in Section 10.16. A news article is a finished piece, so it does not take one, even if it was updated once. A live blog that keeps adding entries is closer to the Worldometer case, and a retrieval date is a defensible choice there.

Review published as an article

A film, book, or album review in a newspaper takes the newspaper format plus a bracketed description of what is reviewed. From the OSLIS guide:

Kakutani, M. (2015, July 11). Kind hero of 'Mockingbird' is cast as racist in new book [Review of the book Go set a watchman, by H. Lee]. The New York Times, A1.

The reviewed book's title is italic inside the brackets, in sentence case.

Same author, same year

Two articles by the same journalist in the same year are told apart with letters after the year: (Bernstein, 2024a) and (Bernstein, 2024b). Assign the letters by the order of the titles in your reference list, ignoring "A," "An," and "The." Our guide to APA reference list order covers the ordering rule.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Italicizing both the title and the newspaper. Only one element is italic. For a periodical it is the publication name; for a news website it is the article title.

Treating CNN or BBC News as a newspaper. These look like newspapers but have no print paper, so they take the webpage format. The reverse also happens: The Guardian's site feels like a website, but The Guardian prints a daily paper, so it takes the newspaper format.

Title case in the article title. Newspaper headlines are usually in title case on the page. In the reference, convert to sentence case: capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. Keep the publication name in its own capitalization.

Writing "Retrieved from" before the URL. APA 7 dropped "Retrieved from" for ordinary URLs. It survives only in a full retrieval-date statement for pages designed to change.

Adding the date to the in-text citation. The month and day belong in the reference only. In text, write (Thomson, 2022), not (Thomson, 2022, September 8).

Citing the homepage. A reference to nytimes.com does not let a reader find the article. Link the article's own URL, or for a database article, no URL at all.

Using the website name as the author. When an article has a byline, the journalist is the author. Use the organization or the title in the author position only when no person is credited.

Quick-reference table