ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates why all researchers who investigate newsreel footage need to understand newsreel production, distribution, and archival practice. Knowledge of both the newsreel industry’s conventions and specific producers’ practices can prevent misinterpretation of a given piece of film or incorrect inferences about its circulation among audiences. Researchers and scholars will encounter newsreels and newsfilm in contexts that are archival or derived from archival collections and therefore must recognize how such collections differ from other film archives or libraries. That knowledge can produce a clearer understanding of the history and significance of this material. Based on research in archives and online sources, Streible offers a typology of fifty categories of newsreel footage. Most examples stem from the five major newsreel producers in the United States (Fox, Hearst, Universal, Paramount, and Pathé), although the categories are relevant across national boundaries.
