Problem with biblatex-chicago and bibliographies

Question

This is probably a problem with an easy solution, but I am very new to using LaTeX and I have not been able to find the solution.

Anyhow, I am working in Sharelatex on a thesis, and I am using a chicago-authordate-ish bibliography version in biblatex. The problem grew out of me trying to add a newspaper article to my bibliography. When using the following code I could not get the date of the article to show up in the bibliography:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=chicago-authordate,sorting=nyt,cmsdate=both,maxcitenames=2]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{bibliography.bib}
@article{blakeslee1947,
  title={'Flying Saucers' Called Forerunners of the New Atomic Folklore},
  author={Howard W. Blakeslee},
  journal={The Washington Post},
  pages={B2},
  date={1947-07-20},
  entrysubtype={newspaper},
}
@book{Dorson1971a,
author={Richard M. Dorson},
title={American folklore},
publisher={University of Chicago Press},
address={Chicago},
year={1971},
origdate={1959},
}

\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{bibliography.bib} 
\begin{document} 
text \footnote{\cite{blakeslee1947}; \cite[][p. 78]{Dorson1971a}}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Using this code the output became:

When searching for a solution to the missing date in the reference to the article from the Washington post I found an article (Difference between biblatex [style=chicago] and biblatex-chicago packages?) stating that the proper way to call on this style would be like this:

    \documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=authordate,sorting=nyt,cmsdate=both,maxcitenames=2]{biblatex-chicago}

\begin{filecontents}{bibliography.bib}
@article{blakeslee1947,
  title={'Flying Saucers' Called Forerunners of the New Atomic Folklore},
  author={Howard W. Blakeslee},
  journal={The Washington Post},
  pages={B2},
  date={1947-07-20},
  entrysubtype={newspaper},
}
@book{Dorson1971a,
author={Richard M. Dorson},
title={American folklore},
publisher={University of Chicago Press},
address={Chicago},
year={1971},
origdate={1959},
}

\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{bibliography.bib} 
\begin{document} 
text \footnote{\cite{blakeslee1947}; \cite[][p. 78]{Dorson1971a}}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

This proved to amend the problem with the missing date, but I do now instead get a different layout of the bibliography and the footnotes, is there any easy way to get the style of the first example back without having to revert back to the first code-example?:

Answer 1

I was looking again biblatex-chicago's documentation, and what it says about the case is the following:

The Manual now suggests that, no matter which citation style you are using, it is “usually sufficient to cite newspaper and magazine articles entirely within the text” (15.47). This involves giving the title of the journal and the full date of publication in a parenthetical reference, including any other information in the main text (14.206), thereby obviating the need to present such an entry in the list of references. To utilize this method in the author-date styles, in addition to a magazine entrysubtype , you’ll need to place cmsdate=full into the options field, including skipbib there as well to stop the entry printing in the list of references. If the entry only contains a date and journaltitle that’s enough, but if it’s a fuller entry also containing an author then you’ll also need useauthor=false in the options field. Other surplus fields will be ignored. (See osborne:poison.)

So it seems that the problem with the missing date is that biblatex-chicago doesn't expect to print it in the bibliography. (Still, for me it prints the year by the author, and month and date later in parentheses). Anyway, following the documentation, you could use:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[authordate]{biblatex-chicago}

\begin{filecontents}{bibliography.bib}
@article{blakeslee1947,
    title={`Flying Saucers' Called Forerunners of the New Atomic Folklore},
    author={Howard W. Blakeslee},
    journaltitle={The Washington Post},
    pages={B2},
    date={1947-07-20},
    entrysubtype={magazine},
    options={cmsdate=full,skipbib,useauthor=false},
}
@book{Dorson1971a,
    author={Richard M. Dorson},
    title={American folklore},
    publisher={University of Chicago Press},
    address={Chicago},
    year={1971},
    origdate={1959},
}

\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{bibliography.bib} 
\begin{document} 
    text \footcite[78]{Dorson1971a} \footcite[5]{blakeslee1947}
    \printbibliography
\end{document}

Which results in:

I'm not sure that's what you intended, but it seems to be what the current Chicago Manual favors, and what biblatex-chicago implements in practice.

EDIT: what I mean by "make it work for you, even when not following the style's strict guidelines". Try, for example (or something other in similar lines):

@misc{blakeslee1947,
    title={`Flying Saucers' Called Forerunners of the New Atomic Folklore},
    author={Howard W. Blakeslee},
    titleaddon={The Washington Post, 20 July, 1947, p. B2},
    date={1947},
}