This paper explores historical evolvement in the forms and (at least two pragmatic) functions of reported discourse in Dutch news narratives published between 1860 and 2009. Whilst direct reported discourse expands, indirect reported discourse decreases. Narratives with narrative-external discourse strikingly rose, whereas narratives with narrative-internal discourse stayed firm over time. Until midway 20th century, reported discourse was mainly used as tactic to aggrandize news narratives by retracing news sources’ speech and thought, but then it established an extra validating function by fixing the information exchange between journalist and news source in a Narrative-External Space.