Rostock Newspaper Corpus

The basic body of the Rostock Newspaper Corpus (RNC-1) was assembled at Rostock University between 1996 and 2000. Initiated by Friedrich Ungerer and managed by Kristina Schneider, the corpus was designed for the investigation of global developments in news writing, particularly the development of popular journalism over the past three centuries (cf. Schneider 2002 for a detailed discussion).

RNC-1 comprises British news reports from 1700 to 2000. It consists of ten samples, drawn from six newspapers per period in 30- or 40-year intervals. Each newspaper is represented by a 10,000 word sample, thus yielding a total corpus size of 600,000 words.

In 2012, the Rostock Newspaper Corpus moved to the University of Duisburg-Essen. A systematically condensed version of the basic corpus, RNC-2, is currently under construction.

Project leaders: RNC-1 Friedrich Ungerer, Kristina Schneider; RNC-2 Birte Bös
Time of compilation: 1996-2000 (RNC-1), present (RNC-2)
Size: RNC-1 600,000 words
Period: 1700-2000
Released: RNC-1 2000

Contact: birte.boes@uni-due.de