I've designed several types for news text use.

Sans:
Brown
Sense and Sensibility

Serif:
Pratt
Worldwide

If you pick up a copy of The Globe and Mail (Canadian newspaper), you can see Pratt, Sense, and Sensibility used throughout.

I think the two foundries that have done the most newspaper fonts recently are Font Bureau and Hoefler & Frere Jones. I would definitely look at their fonts and if anything looks interesting talk to them (via skype?) about your needs, as well as to Nick Shinn and Mario Feliciano. I am also very impressed with Peter Bilak's Greta Text. Adobe's Utopia is another one widely used for newspapers, I believe, and Jean Francois Porchez has done a number of fine newspaper fonts also. Personally, I like Rocky a lot as a headline font. (Le Monde is using it now, I think.)

Right Clauses, the fabulous Gerard Unger. I knew I'd leave out some. I'm sure there are many others.

... now that I think of it the wonderful Guardian typefaces and others by Christian Schwartz and Paul Barnes are available at http://commercialtype.com/typefaces .

Newspaper Text at FontShop

Arnhem should be on the list

Apparently is is being used by a Dutch Financial newspaper. See the comments at

http://ilovetypography.com/2008/02/14/typeface-review-arnhem/

I cannot imagine a newspaper ever using ever using such a strong personality type design as Adelle. Legibility be damned, it just doesn't read as a newspaper design.

I have never done newspaper work so I am out of my element. Aesthetics and personal preference aside, would any of you who have had extensive experience in this area consider Starling an appropriate newspaper face? I would be curious to hear your reasoning.

@clauses: For myself and the thread, can you define "grades?"

And Jad, I've used Flama for a newspaper design in progress, and it's worked out nicely so far. Compared to some of the other straight-sided sans's, it has a characteristic warmth. If you need that hard-edged, almost techy feel, it might not be ideal. But more often than not some friendliness is a good thing in a newspaper setting.

Only slightly off topic... Mencken Text, mentioned with a link in an earlier post, was named after H.L. Mencken. Here's what it says on the site:

"The family’s name Mencken is a tribute to H.L. Mencken’s journalistic contributions to The Sun. According to the London Daily Mail, Mencken ventured beyond the typewriter into the world of typography. Because he felt Americans did not recognize irony when they read it, he proposed the creation of a special typeface to be called ironics, with the text slanting in the opposite direction from italic types, to indicate the author’s humour."

This was a half-century before the proposed sarc mark!

Some of Font Bureau’s graded newspaper text families are demonstrated and discussed in the FB Readability Series PDF (3.1 MB), linked from the Help page about the Readability Series: http://www.fontbureau.com/help/readability/

But the PDF is sorely out of date, and doesn’t show Miller Daily, Quiosco, or Zócalo.

Adelle has one wonderful advantage, which is especially relevant to newspaper typography: the Italic is a slanted-Roman.

hhp

Don't believe the hype.
Among others: http://typophile.com/node/49550

And news is a particularly good place for it because of Objectivity.

hhp