History Buffs - Old Newspapers?

One of my hobbies is history (in general). I’m wondering if anyone else has found a good source of online historical newspapers that is free/cheap. I’ve spent a while googling around and looking at my local university’s website and the NY public library’s site to no avail.

I know my local university library has tons and tons of historical newspapers of all types from hundreds of cities for hundreds of years. The problem is that they are all on microfilm/microfiche. This isn’t convenient to me for a number of reasons. I know the technology exists to convert from microfilm/fiche to digital scanned images, but I’m unable to find a repository of any scanned originals so far. I’m surprised that historical copies of a major newspaper (like the NY Times) hasn’t been made available digitally. Or maybe it has and I’m not looking in the right places.

I’ve found some sources that have very limited selections of major historical significance. But nothing with, say, all NY Times (or whatever NYC’s major paper was) from 1800-1950. Or Atlanta’s, or Charlotte’s major paper from that time period.

Why might I be interested in this historical source? I’d like to take a glimpse into the daily lives and opinions of folks at particular times in history. What were people thinking on August 5, 1945? How about August 7th? What about Dec 6, 1941? December 8th? Heck, Sept 10, 2001 for that matter. September 1929/November 1929?

Major historical events are frequently discussed in books focusing on the major historical events. But often these books lack a lot of historical context that help explain the thoughts and feelings motivating historical actors at the time. What about the other stories of the times? What stories lie on page 2 of the newspapers?

I’m just interested yet too lazy to spend a day in the stacks of the old research library browsing through musty microfilm collections.