Using content analysis, the article examines three generations of landmark works on the history of newspapers and periodicals during the 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and finds that “the Communist Party and private newspapers occupied the major position” in the press history in the 1960s and 1970s, and that the Communist Party and private newspapers jointly occupied the major position in the history of newspapers and periodicals from the 1980s to the beginning of this century. In the history of newspapers and periodicals after the new century, the private newspapers and periodicals occupy the main position. In terms of evolutionary features, the history of the Communist Party press is relatively complete and systematic, with the central press being the focus of research in the history of journalism. The selection of the Communist Party’s newspapers and periodicals in press history was influenced by the Soviet model of newspaper history, the positioning of the writing itself, the trend of the times, and the perspective of the researcher. This article reviews the evolution of the Party newspaper into history over the past 70 years, with the intention of revealing the historical trajectory of the positions and tendencies of the era in which the newspaper history was written, and providing some insights on how to break through the “history of the Party newspaper” in the writing of press history in the future.