"I copied them from Paper of Record using Adobe PDF"
Ok, some problems are present with that.
--| There is no such application as "Adobe PDF".
--| PDF is not Adobe's (it is an ISO Standard file format/technology, ISO 32000-1:2008).
--| If all you have is Adobe Reader (any version) then you cannot create PDF.
No version of Adobe Reader can create PDF files, manipulate PDF page content or export PDF page content.
Perhaps the online source already provide PDF files and these were download?
Both Adobe Reader XI and Acrobat XI (Standard and Pro) provide us with a "Select" tool.
IF the PDF's page content is renderable text ("digital" characters rather than an image / picture of characters which is the output of all scanners or "outlined" fonts (which is a vector graphic drawing of the character and not a renderable font) then that renderable text can be copied.
Using the Select tool one selects some rendrable text content then right clicks for the context menu.
On that menu there is the choice of "Copy".
Once copied the content can be pasted into a support application / file.
So, doing this from either Acrobat XI or Adobe Reader XI I can (and have) done a "copy" of renderable textual content in a PDF and then "pasted" same into an MS Word file.
With that said I must admit I am skeptical of what you have harvested being textual content that is actually renderable text (real glyphs derived from real font encoding tables associated with the source file).
Almost always old - old stuff that gets online (in webspace or network space) is the image / picture of the imprint on paper that was scanned (aka "captured"). It may or may not have been OCR'd.
If some organization had folks type in / keyboard in content to a file then, yes, there'd be renderable text.
If what you have is displaying the same layout as the old newspapers then it is 99 44/100 ths of certainty that you have an image, a picture of the old newspaper articles / issues.
If the image / picture of text that is a PDF's content has had OCR applied press Ctrl+A while viewing the PDF.
If many "boxes" of blue appear you have OCR output.
If one big blueish box over the whole page appears you do not have OCR output present.
If you have OCR output then you have the "characters".
These can be exported. These can have copy and paste performed.
BUT no picture / image of text has "styles", "format", "layout", etc. -- it is a picture eh.
So, you get recognized characters. It will not be 100% (an "m" might be recognized as "n~")
Once you have the OCR output characters in Word or whatever you must engage in cleanup.
Please note the MS Word is most decidely not a page layout application so any rework to get a Word file to resemble the layout of a newspaper is problematic.
Keep in mind that back in the day what got to become the printed imprint on paper for any newspaper, etc always came from a manually laid out setup. No InDesign, etc back then.
Be well....