Encyclopedia
The New York Times is a
newspaper published in
New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. and distributed internationally. It is owned by
The New York Times Company, which publishes 47 other newspapers, including the
International Herald Tribune is a widely read English-language [i] international newspaper [i] ...
and the
Boston Globe is the most widely circulated daily newspaper [i] in Boston, Massachusetts [i] and ...
. Nicknamed the "Gray Lady" for its staid appearance and style, it is regarded as a newspaper of record in the
United States. The name is often abbreviated to the
Times, but should not be confused with
The Times is a national newspaper [i] published daily in the United Kingdom [i] since 1785, and unde ...
, which is published in the
United Kingdom.
History
The New York Times was founded on September 18, 1851 by
Henry Jarvis Raymond and
George Jones as the
New-York Daily Times.
On September 14, 1857 the
New-York Daily Times lost its hyphen and the word
Daily and became
The New York Times.
The original intent was to publish the paper every morning except on Sundays. However, during the
Civil War the
Times started publishing Sunday issues.
Between 1870-1871, a series of
Times exposes brought down
Boss Tweed and ended the
Tweed Ring's domination of city hall.
In the 1876 presidential election, while other newspapers declared
Samuel Tilden the victor over
Rutherford B. Hayes, the
Times, under the headline
A Doubtful Election, asserted the outcome remained uncertain. After months, an electoral commission and Congress finally decided the election in Hayes's favor.
In 1896
Adolph Ochs, publisher of
The Chattanooga Times, acquired
The New York Times and in 1897 he coined the paper's celebrated slogan, "All The News That's Fit To Print," widely interpreted as a jab at competing papers in New York City that were known for
yellow journalism. Under his guidance,
The New York Times achieved an international scope, circulation, and reputation.
The newspaper gave its name to
Times Square in 1904 after it moved to new headquarters on
42nd Street in an area formerly known as
Longacre Square. It was here that the New Year's Eve tradition of lowering a
lighted ball from the Times building was started by the paper in 1907. After only nine years in Times Square, the paper relocated in 1913 to 229 West 43rd Street, its current headquarters. The original Times Square building, now known as
One Times Square, was sold in 1961. A new headquarters for the newspaper, a
skyscraper designed by
Renzo Piano, is currently under construction at 41st Street and 8th Avenue in
Manhattan.
In 1904, the
Times received the first on-the-spot wireless transmission from a naval battle, a report of the destruction of the Russian fleet at the
Battle of Port Arthur in the
Yellow Sea during the
Russo-Japanese war.
In 1919 it made its first trans-Atlantic delivery to
London. In 1910, the first air delivery of the
Times to
Philadelphia began. In 1920, a "4 A.M. Airplane Edition" was sent by plane to
Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening.
November 6, 1928, on Times Tower, the Motograph News Bulletin, better known as the zipper, starts flashing its 14,800 bulbs with election results:
Herbert Hoover defeats
Al Smith. Begining May 18, 1942, the zipper went dark in compliance with wartime dimout rules.
The crossword began to appear in 1942 as a feature, and the paper bought the classical radio station
WQXR in the same year. The fashion section started in 1946. The
Times also started an international edition in 1946, but stopped publishing it in 1967 and joined with the owners of the
New York Herald Tribune and
The Washington Post is the largest newspaper [i] in Washington, D.C. [i], the capital of the United States [i] ...
to publish the
International Herald Tribune is a widely read English-language [i] international newspaper [i] ...
in
Paris. The Op-Ed section started appearing in 1970. More recently, in 1996,
The New York Times went online, giving access to readers all over the world on the Web at .
In 1964, the paper was the defendant in a libel case known as
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, in which the Supreme Court established the actual malice legal test for libel.
Pulitzer Prizes
The Times has won 94
Pulitzer Prizes, far more than any other newspaper:
1918The New York Times, for the most disinterested and meritorious public service rendered by an American newspaper -- complete and accurate coverage of the war.
1923Alva Johnston, for distinguished reporting of science news.
1926Edward M. Kingsbury, for the most distinguished editorial of the year, on the Hundred Neediest Cases.
1930Russell Owen, for graphic news dispatches from the
Byrd Antarctic Expedition.
1932Walter Duranty, for reporting of the news from
Russia.
1934Frederick T. Birchall, for unbiased reporting from
Germany.
1935Arthur Krock, for distinguished, impartial and analytical Washington coverage.
1936Lauren D. Lyman, for distinguished reporting: a world beat on the departure of the Lindberghs for England.
1937Anne O'Hare McCormick, for distinguished foreign correspondence: dispatches and special articles from Europe.
William L. Laurence, for distinguished reporting of the Tercentenary Celebration at
Harvard, shared with four other reporters.
1938Arthur Krock, for distinguished Washington correspondence.
1940Otto D. Tolischus, for articles from
Berlin explaining the economic and ideological background of war-engaged
Germany.
1941The New York Times, special citation for the public education value of its foreign news reports.
1942Louis Stark, for distinguished reporting of labor stories.
1943Hanson W. Baldwin, for a series of articles reporting a tour of the Pacific battle areas.
1944The New York Times, for the most disinterested and meritorious service rendered by an American newspaper -- a survey of the teaching of American history.
1945James B. Reston , for news and interpretive articles on the Dumbarton Oaks Security Conference.
1946Arnaldo Cortesi, for distinguished correspondence from
Buenos Aires.
William L. Laurence, for his eyewitness account of the atomic bombing of
Nagasaki and articles on the atomic bomb.
1947Brooks Atkinson, for a distinguished series of articles on
Russia.
1949C.P. Trussell, for consistent excellence in covering the national scene from Washington.
1950Meyer Berger, for a distinguished example of local reporting -- an article on the killing of 13 people by a berserk gunman.
1951Arthur Krock, a special commendation for his exclusive interview with President Truman: the outstanding instance of national reporting in 1950.
Cyrus L. Sulzberger, special citation for his interview with Archbishop Stepinac of
Yugoslavia.
1952Anthony H. Leviero, for distinguished national reporting.
1953The New York Times, special citation for its Review of the Week section which "has brought enlightenment and intelligent commentary to its readers."
1955Harrison E. Salisbury, for a series based on his five years in
Russia.
Arthur Krock, a special citation for distinguished correspondence from Washington.
1956Arthur Daley, for his sports column, "Sports of The Times."
1957James B. Reston , for distinguished reporting from Washington.
1958The New York Times, for distinguished coverage of foreign news.
1960A.M. Rosenthal, for perceptive and authoritative reporting from
Poland.
1963Anthony Lewis, for distinguished reporting of the
United States Supreme Court.
1964David Halberstam, for distinguished reporting from
South Vietnam.
1968Anthony Lukas, for a distinguished example of local reporting -- an article on a murdered 18-year-old girl and her two different lives.
1970Ada Louise Huxtable, for distinguished
architecture criticism.
1971Harold C. Schonberg, music critic, for distinguished criticism.
1972The New York Times, for a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper -- publication of the Pentagon Papers.
1973Max Frankel, for his coverage of
President Nixon's visit to
China, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.
1974Hedrick Smith, for a distinguished example of reporting on foreign affairs, coverage of the
Soviet Union.
1976Sydney H. Schanberg, for his coverage of the fall of
Cambodia, a distinguished example of reporting on foreign affairs.
Walter W. Smith , for his "Sports of The Times" column, an example of distinguished criticism.
1978Henry Kamm, chief Asian diplomatic correspondent, for articles calling attention to the plight of
Indochinese refugees.
Walter Kerr, Sunday drama critic, for an outstanding example of distinguished criticism.
William Safire, Op-Ed Page columnist, for his columns on the Bert Lance affair, an example of distinguished commentary.
1979Russell Baker, for his "Observer" column, an example of distinguished commentary.
1981Dave Anderson, for his "Sports of The Times" column, an example of distinguished commentary.
John M. Crewdson, for his coverage of illegal aliens and immigration, a distinguished example of reporting on national affairs.
1982John Darnton, for his coverage of the crisis in
Poland, a distinguished example of international reporting.
Jack Rosenthal, deputy editorial page editor, for a distinguished example of editorial page writing.
1983Thomas L. Friedman, for his coverage of the war in
Lebanon, a distinguished example of international reporting.
Nan Robertson, for her article in The New York Times Magazine on her experience with toxic shock syndrome, a distinguished example of feature writing.
1984Paul Goldberger, for distinguished architecture criticism.
John Noble Wilford, for national reporting on a wide variety of scientific topics.
1986Donal Henahan, music critic, for distinguished criticism.
The New York Times, for explanatory journalism: a series of articles on the
Strategic Defense Initiative, the "Star Wars" program.
1987The New York Times, for national reporting on causes of the Challenger shuttle disaster.
Alex S. Jones, for distinguished specialized reporting on the dissension that dissolved a
Louisville newspaper dynasty.
1988Thomas L. Friedman, for coverage of
Israel, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.
1989Bill Keller, for coverage of the
Soviet Union, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.
1990Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, for coverage of political turmoil in
China, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.
1991Natalie Angier, for coverage of
molecular biology and animal behavior, a distinguished example of beat reporting.
Serge Schmemann, for coverage of the
reunification of Germany, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.
1992Anna Quindlen, for "Public & Private," a compelling column covering a wide range of personal and political topics.
Howell Raines, for "Grady's Gift," an account in The New York Times Magazine of his childhood friendship with his family's housekeeper and the lasting lessons of their interracial relationship.
1993John F. Burns, for courageous coverage of the strife and destruction in
Bosnia, a distinguished example of international reporting.
1994The New York Times, for local reporting of the
World Trade Center bombing, pooling the efforts of the metropolitan staff as well as Times journalists covering locations as far-ranging as the Middle East and Washington.
Isabel Wilkerson, for distinguished feature writing.
Kevin Carter, for his photograph of a vulture perching near a little girl in the
Sudan who had collapsed from hunger, a picture that became an icon of starvation.
1995Margo Jefferson, for her book reviews and other pieces, examples of distinguished criticism.
1996Rick Bragg, for distinguished feature writing.
Robert D. McFadden, for distinguished rewrite journalism, applied to a broad range of stories.
Robert B. Semple Jr., for distinguished editorial writing on environmental issues.
1997John F. Burns, for distinguished international reporting on the
Taliban movement in
Afghanistan.
1998Linda Greenhouse, for reporting on the Supreme Court's work and its significance with sophistication and a sense of history.
Michiko Kakutani, for reviewing 1997's many major literary works in essays that were fearless and authoritative.
The New York Times, for a series of articles on the effects of drug corruption in
Mexico, a distinguished example of international reporting.
1999Maureen Dowd, for the moral insight and wit she brought to bear in her columns on the combat between
President Clinton and
Kenneth Starr.
The New York Times, notably Jeff Gerth, for a series of articles disclosing the corporate sale of American technology to China with the approval of the U.S. Government despite national security risks.
2002The New York Times, for public service, for "A Nation Challenged," a daily special section covering the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in
Afghanistan and America's campaign against terrorism. The section, which included biographical sketches of the victims, also appeared online.
The New York Times, for its informed and detailed reporting that profiled the global terrorism network and the threats it posed, a distinguished example of explanatory reporting.
The New York Times, for its photographs chronicling the pain and the perseverance of people enduring protracted conflict in
Afghanistan and
Pakistan, a distinguished example of feature
photography.
The New York Times, for its consistently outstanding photographic coverage of the terrorist attack on New York City and its aftermath, a distinguished example of breaking news photography.
Gretchen Morgenson, for her trenchant and incisive
Wall Street coverage, a distinguished example of beat reporting.
Barry Bearak, for his deeply affecting and illuminating coverage of daily life in war-torn
Afghanistan, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.
Thomas Friedman, for his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat.
2003Clifford J. Levy, for investigative reporting, for his "Broken Homes" series that exposed the abuse of mentally ill adults in state-regulated homes.
2004The New York Times, for public service, for its series written by David Barstow and Lowell Bergman that examined death and injury among American workers and exposed employers who break basic safety rules.
2005 Walt Bogdanich, for national reporting, for his investigative series about the corporate cover-up of responsibility for fatal accidents at railway crossings.
2006Nicholas D. Kristof for commentary on bringing the genocide in
Darfur to the world's attention.
Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley for international reporting for their examination of
China's legal system.
James Risen and Eric Lichtblau for national reporting for their coverage of the United State government's secret eavesdropping program.
Famous mistakes
In 1920, a
New York Times editorial ridiculed Robert Goddard and his claim that a
rocket would work in space:
- That Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
In 1969, days before
Apollo 11s landing on the moon, the newspaper published a tongue-in-cheek correction:
- Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.
On November 15, 1992, the
Times published a list of slang terms that were supposedly used in the
Seattle grunge scene. This was later proven to be a
hoax created by Megan Jasper, a sales representative for
Sub Pop Records.
On several occasions the
Times has erroneously published premature obituaries, including:
- William Baer in 1942, as a result of a hoax by his students
- Alan Abel in 1980, who had faked his own death as an elaborate hoax
- Katharine Sergava in 2003, based on an earlier incorrect obituary in The Daily Telegraph was founded in 1855 [i], and is one of only two remaining daily British [i] ...
.
Historical Controversies
The paper, like many news organizations, has often been accused of giving too little or too much play to various events for reasons not related to objective journalism.
One of these allegations is that before and during
World War II, the
New York Times downplayed accusations that the
Third Reich had targeted
Jews for expulsion and genocide, at least in part because the publisher, who was Jewish, feared the taint of taking on any 'Jewish cause'.
Another serious charge is the accusation that the Times, through its coverage of the
Soviet Union by correspondent
Walter Duranty helped to cover up the
Ukrainian genocide perpetrated by
Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.
The Times today
The New York Times is one of the most prominent American daily newspapers, although it trails
USA Today and the
Wall Street Journal in circulation. It has traditionally printed full transcripts of major speeches and debates. The newspaper is currently owned by
The New York Times Company, in which descendants of
Ochs, principally the
Sulzberger family, maintain a dominant role.
Since winning its first
Pulitzer Prize , in 1918 for its World War I reporting, the
Times has won 94 Pulitzer Prizes, including a record seven in 2002. In 1971 it broke the Pentagon Papers story, publishing leaked documents revealing that the U.S. government had been painting an unrealistically rosy picture of the progress of the
Vietnam War. This led to
New York Times Co. v. United States , which declared the government's
prior restraint of the classified documents was unconstitutional. More recently, in 2004 the
Times won a Pulitzer award for a series written by David Barstow and Lowell Bergman on employers and workplace safety issues.
The
Times has been going through a downsizing for several years, offering buyouts to workers and cutting expenses , in common with a general trend among print newsmedia. At the end of 2005 it had over 350 full time reporters and about 40 photographers, in addition to hundreds of free-lance contributors who work for the paper more occasionally.
The
Times is based in
New York City. It has 16 news bureaus in the New York region, 11 national news bureaus and 26 foreign news bureaus. In recent years, it has sought to strengthen its status as a national newspaper by increasing to twenty its number of printing locations, allowing early morning distribution in many additional markets.
In 2005, the paper reported a circulation of roughly 1,131,000 copies on weekdays and 1,681,000 copies on Sundays. In the New York City metropolitan area, the paper costs $1.00 Monday through Saturday and $3.50 on Sunday. New home delivery subscribers may receive a discount.
The newspaper continues to own classical
WQXR and
WQEW . The classical format was simulcast on both frequencies until the early 1990s, when the big-band and standards format of WNEW-AM moved from 1130 AM to 1560. The AM station changed its call letters from WQXR to WQEW. By the beginning of the 21st century,
The Times had begun leasing WQEW to
ABC Radio for its
Radio Disney format, which continues on 1560 AM to this day.
The
Times had a separate Television guide from March 1988 to April 2006. It was the last major newspaper to not outsource its
television guide's editorial content to a syndication service such as Tribune Media Services, though the latter company compiled the data for the guide's TV grids. Blurbs for the listings of theatrical and television movies were based on the opinions of Times critics but edited to a succinct form by the former film critic Howard Thompson, Lawrence Van Gelder and Anita Gates.
Major sections
The newspaper is organized in three sections:
;1.
News : Includes International,
National,
Washington,
Business,
Technology,
Science,
Health, Sports,
New York Region,
Education,
Weather, and
Obituaries.
;2.
Opinion : Includes Editorials, Op-Eds and Letters to the Editor.
;3.
Features : Includes
Arts,
Books,
Movies,
Theater, Travel, NYC Guide, Dining &
Wine, Home & Garden,
Fashion & Style,
Crossword, The New York Times Magazine, and Week in Review
Style
When referring to people, it uses titles, rather than unadorned last names . Its headlines tend to be verbose, and, for major stories, come with subheadings giving further details, although it is moving away from this style. It stayed with an 8-column format years after other papers had switched to 6, and it was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography, with the first color photograph on the front page appearing on October 16, 1997. In the absence of a major headline, the day's most important story generally appears in the top-righthand column.
The
typefaces used for the headlines include
Cheltenham. The text is set in Imperial.
Web presence
The
Times has had a strong presence on the web since 1995, and has been ranked one of the top web sites. It is accessible via and . It has a general policy of keeping articles freely available for a week and charges subscription for older articles. Accessing some articles requires registration, though this restriction can be bypassed by using a link generator or in some cases through
Times RSS feeds. The website had 555 million pageviews in March 2005.
For the month of March 2006, NYTimes.com had a strong traffic, with 11.6 million unique visitors and continues to rank as the number one newspaper site. NYT Company consolidation is the 12th most-visited parent company, with 37.7 million unique visitors.
In September 2005, the paper decided to begin subscription based service for daily columns in a program known as
TimesSelect. This was unusual in that it included previously free editorial columns, and so it consequently led to attempts to work around it such as Never Pay Retail and the posting of TimesSelect material by bloggers. One of the reasons for this new service was to move from a large dependency on ad revenue.
Times Select is free for print copy subscribers , online readers can access it for $7.95 per month, about the cost of two Sunday editions, or can get a year subscription for $49.95 per year .
Times columnists such as
Nicholas Kristof and
Thomas Friedman have made their criticisms of TimesSelect clear, with Friedman going so far as to say "I hate it. It pains me enormously because it’s cut me off from a lot, a lot of people, especially because I have a lot of people who reading me overseas, like in India and whatnot, and so I hate it ... I feel totally cut off from my audience." in a video interview conducted at the 2006
Webby Awards. Most for-pay NYT editorials are available online shortly after their publication through blog searches. As of late January 2006 online reproduction of
Select content is extremely difficult to find on commercial websites.
Management and employees
Publishers
...
- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
- Orvil Dryfoos
- Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger
- Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.
Executive editors
- Turner Catledge
- James Reston
- position vacant
- Abe Rosenthal
- Max Frankel
- Joseph Lelyveld
- Howell Raines
- Bill Keller
Current Masthead
The News Sections- Bill Keller, Executive Editor
- Jill Abramson, Managing Editor
- John M. Geddes, Managing Editor
- Jonathan Landman, Deputy Managing Editor
- Richard L. Berke, Assistant Managing Editor
- Tom Bodkin, Assistant Managing Editor
- Susan Edgerley, Assistant Managing Editor
- Glenn Kramon, Assistant Managing Editor
- Gerald Marzorati, Assistant Managing Editor
- Michele Mcnally, Assistant Managing Editor
- William E. Schmidt, Assistant Managing Editor
- Craig R. Whitney, Assistant Managing Editor
Business Management- Scott H. Heekin-Canedy, President, General Manager
- Dennis L. Stern, Senior V.P., Deputy General Manager
- Denise F. Warren, Senior V.P., Chief Advertising Officer
- Alyse Myers, Senior V.P., Chief Marketing Officer
- Alexis Buryk, Senior V.P., Advertising
- Thomas K. Carley, Senior V.P., Planning
- Yasmin Namini, Senior V.P., Circulation
- David A. Thurm, Senior V.P., Chief Information Officer
- Roland A. Caputo, V.P., Chief Financial Officer
- Terry L. Hayes, V.P., Labor Relations
- Thomas P. Lombardo, V.P., Production
- Muriel Watkins, V.P., Human Resources
- Cristian L. Edwards, President, News Services
- Vivian Schiller, Senior V.P., General Manager, Nytimes.Com
- Michael Oreskes, Editor, International Herald Tribune
Current columnists
Op-Ed Columnists...
, Wednesday, Saturday
Former Op-Ed ColumnistsRussell Baker, Gail Collins, Anthony Lewis, Flora Lewis, Anna Quindlen,
James Reston, A. M. Rosenthal,
William Safire,Tom Wicker
News Columnists- Dave Anderson, Weekly
- Peter Applebome Wednesday, Sunday
- Harvey Araton, Weekly
- Dan Barry, Wednesday, Saturday
- Roger Cohen, Wednesday, Saturday
- Clyde Haberman, Tuesday, Friday
- William C. Rhoden, Weekly
- Selena Roberts, Weekly
- George Vecsey, Weekly
- John Vinocur, Tuesday
Business ColumnistsRecent controversies
In 2003,
The Times admitted that
Jayson Blair, one of its reporters, had committed repeated journalistic fraud over a span of several years. The general professionalism of the paper was questioned, though Blair immediately resigned following the incident. Questions of affirmative action in journalism were also raised, since Blair was
black. The paper's top two editors – Howell Raines, the executive editor, and Gerald Boyd, managing editor – resigned their posts following the incident.
In April, 2004
The Times reversed its policy of not using the term
Armenian Genocide. Despite publishing dozens of articles about the Armenian Genocide as it progressed,
The Times for a period shied away from using the term in its articles as part of its editorial policy. The
Turkish Government still denies genocide occurred. Incidentally,
Times columnist and former reporter
Nicholas D. Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has mentioned being of Armenian descent and has criticized the ongoing denial of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government, in his
Times column.
On May 26, 2004,
The Times published a piece entitled "From the Editors" indicating that the paper's reporting of the lead up to the war in Iraq, "especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists...was not as rigorous as it should have been."
In October 2005, Times reporter Judith Miller was released from prison after an 85-days, when she agreed to testify to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury after receiving a personal waiver, both on the phone and in writing, of her earlier confidential source agreement with
Lewis "Scooter" Libby. No other reporter whose testimony had been sought in the case had received such a direct and particularized release. Miller’s courage and fortitude in going to jail to protect her sources were widely applauded by journalists and others throughout the world; they recognized that only by protecting confidential sources can the free flow of information to the public, especially from government critics and whistleblowers, truly exist. Her sacrifice also fueled an initiative on
Capitol Hill to enact a Federal Shield law, comparable to the state shield laws which protect reporters in 49 of the 50 states. After her second appearance before the grand jury, Miller was released from her contempt of court find
