We Analyzed 450 Framed Articles. Here’s What People Actually Frame.
According to our 2026 analysis of 450 custom framed newspaper and magazine articles ordered at YourFramedArticle, the most common reason people frame an article is a personal profile or interview (20% of all orders), followed by business milestones (14%) and company features (11%).
When you think of someone framing a newspaper article, you probably picture a front page of The New York Times. The reality, after designing and framing 450 real articles for real customers, looks very different, and much more interesting. We went through every article we’ve ever framed and classified each one: what kind of story it was, what occasion it marked, and which publication it came from. Here’s what the data says.
So what do people actually frame?
Setting aside general news stories, here are the most common reasons an article ends up in a frame:
Personal profiles and interviews: 20% of all framed articles. Founder interviews, artist features, “meet your neighbor” pieces. The single biggest category, by far.
Business milestones: 14%. Acquisitions, funding rounds, name-partner promotions, product launches, big casting announcements.
Company features: 11%. A journalist telling your company’s story.
Personal essays and op-eds: 8%. People frame their own words, not just coverage of themselves.
Awards and “best of” lists: 7%. Making the Out100, a “40 under 40”, the world’s best rums.
Sports milestones: 5%. State titles, record rounds, first career walk-offs.
Weddings, engagements and family news: 3%. Including one couple’s wine-country wedding feature and babies blessed by the Pope in Rome.
Two patterns run through all of it. First: the person framing the article is almost always in the article. In a fifth of the pieces we could verify, the customer’s name (or their company’s) is right there in the headline. Second: the frame is very often a gift. A daughter’s championship, a friend’s first feature, a colleague’s retirement story: someone else saw the article and decided it deserved a wall.
A quarter of it is business
26% of everything we frame is B2B: press coverage of acquisitions, funding announcements, executive appointments, product launches. Companies frame their milestones for the office wall. Increasingly, teams also gift a framed article to a founder, a retiring executive, or a client who just made the news.
Nobody frames “the news.” People frame their news.
Our 450 framed articles came from 337 distinct publications, and 87% of those publications appear exactly once in our data. Nearly two-thirds of everything we’ve framed came from an outlet no other customer had ever ordered from.
The New York Times does top our leaderboard (19 articles), followed by Forbes (14), The Wall Street Journal (7), The Globe and Mail (7) and The Washington Post (5). But the long tail is the real story: a county sports weekly in South Carolina, a fintech newsletter in Brazil, a local Italian daily covering a graduation party, a Park City outlet’s feature on a dog rescue volunteer. What makes an article frame-worthy isn’t the masthead. It’s that you’re in it.
Local news beats national news
Local and regional outlets account for 29% of every article we’ve framed, more than national publications (26%), and ahead of trade and niche media (23%). University and institutional publications add another 12%.
It makes sense once you see the occasions above: the local paper is where your daughter’s championship, your restaurant’s opening, and your retirement after 30 years on the force actually get covered. National press writes about the world; local press writes about you.
Frame it before it disappears
Here’s the finding that surprised us most. Of the article URLs we could verify, 24.9% were behind a paywall and 6.4% were dead links: the story had moved, been unpublished, or the outlet had shut down.
Digital news feels permanent. It isn’t. Roughly 1 in 16 of the articles our customers cared enough about to frame had already vanished from the web by the time we checked. Print remains the only version of your story that can’t be unpublished.
Old news is good news
Most customers frame fast: 63% of dated articles were published in the last two years. But the tail runs deep. 7% of framed articles were more than five years old, including stories from 2012, 2002, and a 1984 New York Times restaurant review, framed as a gift more than four decades after it ran.
Recent articles are celebrations. Old articles are memories.
Key numbers at a glance
450 framed articles, from 337 different publications
87% of publications appear only once in our data
#1 occasion: personal profiles and interviews (20%), ahead of business milestones (14%) and company features (11%)
29% local press vs 26% national press
1 in 4 verified articles behind a paywall; 6% of links already dead
Oldest article framed: November 25, 1984 (The New York Times)
Frequently asked questions
What kind of newspaper articles do people frame?
Mostly articles about themselves or someone they love: personal profiles and interviews (20%), business milestones such as acquisitions and promotions (14%), company features (11%), personal essays (8%), awards and “best of” lists (7%), sports achievements (5%) and weddings or family news (3%), based on 450 real customer orders.
Can you frame an article that is behind a paywall or no longer online?
Yes. In our data, 24.9% of framed articles were behind a paywall and 6.4% of the original links were already dead. As long as you can share the article text with us, a custom framed print preserves the story even after the web version disappears.
Is a framed article a good gift?
It’s one of the most common ways our frames are bought. A large share of orders are gifts marking someone else’s moment: a daughter’s championship, a friend’s first big feature, a colleague’s retirement story, a founder’s acquisition announcement.
Methodology
We analyzed all 450 articles framed by YourFramedArticle to date (449 unique URLs; one article was loved enough to be framed twice, by two different customers). Each article was classified by publication type and story archetype based on the publication and article content. Access status (open / paywalled / dead) was verified for 173 URLs in August 2026. All data is aggregated and anonymized; no individual customer orders are identified. Questions about the data, or want to cite it? Reach out. We’re happy to share details.
