The New York Times
The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady" (for its staid appearance and style) is regarded as a national newspaper of record. Founded in 1851, the newspaper has won 98 Pulitzer Prizes,[New York Times Company : Company : Awards : Pulitzer Prizes : NYTimes Media Group] more than any other newspaper.[Pulitzer Prize on topics.nytimes.com] Its motto, as printed in the upper left-hand corner of the front page, is "All the news that's fit to print."
The Times is owned by The New York Times Company, which publishes 18 other newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe. The company's chairman is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., whose family has controlled the paper since 1896.
History
The New York Times was founded on September 18, 1851, by journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones as the New-York Daily Times. The paper changed its name to The New York Times in 1857. The newspaper was originally published every day but Sunday, but during the Civil War the Times, along with other major dailies, started publishing Sunday issues.
The paper's influence grew during 1870-71 when it published a series of exposés of Boss Tweed that led to the end of the Tweed Ring's domination of New York's city hall.[The New York Times Company: New York Times Timeline 1851-1880] In the 1880s, the Times transitioned from supporting Republican candidates to becoming politically independent; in 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential election. While this move hurt the Times's readership, the paper regained most of its lost ground within a few years.
The Times was acquired by Adolph Ochs, publisher of The Chattanooga Times, in 1896. In 1897, he coined the paper's slogan, "All The News That's Fit To Print," a jab at competing papers (the New York World and the New York Journal American) known for lurid yellow journalism. Under his guidance, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, and reputation.
The paper moved its headquarters to 42nd Street in 1904, lending its name to Times Square, where the New Year's Eve tradition of lowering a lighted ball from the Times building was started by the paper. After nine years in Times Square, the paper relocated to 229 West 43rd Street. It remained there until early 2007, and is now three blocks south at 620 Eighth Avenue. The original Times Square building, known as One Times Square, was sold in 1961.
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 from the press-boat Haimun during the Russo-Japanese war. In 1910, the first air delivery of the Times to Philadelphia began. The Times first trans-Atlantic delivery to London occurred in 1919. 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.
In the 1940s, the paper extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the fashion section in 1946. The Times began an international edition in 1946. The international edition stopped publishing in 1967, when it joined the owners of the New York Herald Tribune and The Washington Post to publish the International Herald Tribune in Paris. The paper bought a classical radio station (WQXR) in 1946.
The New York Times reduced its page width to from on August 6, 2007, adopting the width that has become the U.S. newspaper industry standard.
Times v. Sullivan
The paper's involvement in a 1964 libel case helped bring one of the key United States Supreme Court decisions supporting freedom of the press, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
The United States Supreme Court established the actual malice standard for press reports to be considered defamatory or libelous. The malice standard requires the plaintiff in a defamation or libel case prove the publisher of the statement knew the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. Because of the high burden of proof on the plaintiff, and difficulty in proving what is inside a person's head, such cases against public figures rarely succeed .
The Pentagon Papers
In 1971, the Pentagon Papers, a secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1971, were given ("leaked") to Neil Sheehan of The New York Times by former State Department official Daniel Ellsberg, with his friend Anthony Russo assisting in copying them. The Times began publishing excerpts as a series of articles on June 13. Controversy and lawsuits followed.
The papers revealed, among other things, that the government had deliberately expanded its role in the war by conducting air strikes over Laos, raids along the coast of North Vietnam, and offensive actions taken by U.S. Marines well before the public was told about the actions, and while President Lyndon B. Johnson had been promising not to expand the war. The document increased the credibility gap for the U.S. government, and hurt efforts by the Nixon administration to fight the on-going war.
When the Times began publishing its series, President Nixon became incensed. His words to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger included "people have gotta be put to the torch for this sort of thing..." and "let's get the son-of-a-bitch in jail." After failing to get the Times to stop publishing, Attorney General John Mitchell and President Nixon obtained a federal court injunction that the Times cease publication of excerpts. The newspaper appealed and the case began working through the court system.
On June 18, 1971 the Washington Post began publishing its own series. Ben Bagdikian, a Post editor, had obtained portions of the papers from Ellsberg. That day the Post received a call from the Assistant Attorney General, William Rehnquist, asking them to stop publishing. When the Post refused, the U.S. Justice Department sought another injunction. The U.S. District court judge refused, and the government appealed.
On June 26, 1971 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take both cases, merging them into New York Times Co. v. United States 403 U.S. 713. On June 30, 1971 the Supreme Court held in a 6-3 decision that the injunctions were unconstitutional prior restraints and that the government had not met the burden of proof required. The justices wrote nine separate opinions, disagreeing on significant substantive issues. While it was generally seen as a victory for those who claim the First Amendment enshrines an absolute right to free speech, many felt it a lukewarm victory, offering little protection for future publishers when claims of national security were at stake.
Pulitzer Prizes
.
The Times has won 98 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper.
Historical controversies
The paper, like many news organizations, has often been accused of giving too little or too much coverage to events for reasons not related to objective journalism. One of these allegations is that before and during World War II, the newspaper downplayed accusations that the Third Reich had targeted Jews for expulsion and genocide, 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 cover up the Ukrainian genocide by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.
In 1965, the Times published a story about a Jewish man turned neo-Nazi, Dan Burros. Burros killed himself minutes after the paper came out with the story.
The Times has been accused by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting of giving partial coverage of events in the 1980s in Central America, in particular by insisting on human rights violations committed in Nicaragua, to the detriment of other abuses during the Salvadoran Civil War, the Guatemalan Civil War or under the dictatorship in Honduras.[ Questionnaire for the New York Times on Its Central America Coverage, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), February 1998 ]
Today
The New York Times trails in circulation only to USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper is owned by The New York Times Company, in which descendants of Adolph Ochs, principally the Sulzberger family, maintain a dominant role.
The Times has been downsizing for several years, offering buyouts to workers and cutting expenses,
In addition to its New York City headquarters, the Times has 16 news bureaus in New York State, 11 national news bureaus and 26 foreign news bureaus.
In March 2007, the paper reported a circulation of 1,120,420
copies on weekdays and 1,627,062 copies on Sundays.[Times home delivery discount]
The newspaper owns the classical music radio station WQXR (96.3 FM) and formerly owned its AM sister, WQEW (1560 AM). The classical music format was simulcast on both frequencies until the early 1990s, when the big-band and standards music format of WNEW-AM (now WBBR) 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 was leasing WQEW to ABC Radio for its Radio Disney format, which continues on 1560 AM. Disney became the owner of WQEW in 2007.
The Times had a separate television guide from 1988 to 2006, and was the last major newspaper to outsource its television guide's editorial to a syndication service such as Tribune Media Services, which compiled the guide's TV grids. Theatrical and movie listings were based on the opinions of Times critics and edited by former film critic Howard Thompson[Feature: Howard Thompson | 12/25/2002 | Citypaper.com] from the section's inception in 1988 until a year before his death in 2002, then by Lawrence Van Gelder, Gene Rondinaro, Tim Sastrowardoyo, Neil Genzlinger, and Anita Gates.
A new headquarters for the newspaper, New York Times Tower, is a skyscraper designed by Renzo Piano. It was occupied in June 2007 and is at 620 Eighth Avenue, between West 40th and 41st Streets, in Manhattan.[ ]
Modern controversies
Jayson Blair was a New York Times reporter who was forced to resign from the newspaper in May 2003, after he was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of his stories. Some critics contended that Blair's race was a major factor in the Times' initial reluctance to fire him. [Jayson Blair: A Case Study of What Went Wrong at The New York Times December 10, 2004 By Kristina Nwazota of PBS]
The Times has been variously accused of having a liberal or a conservative bias.[Time: "The Next War in Iraq."][The Nation:http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050418/baker][Russ Baker][Washington Post][ Media Matters on William Safire: http://mediamatters.org/items/200410110010][Eric Alterman : http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030224/alterman2] According to a 2007 survey of public perceptions of major media outlets, 40% believe the Times has a liberal slant and 11% believe it has a conservative slant.
In mid-2004, the newspaper's then public editor (ombudsman), Daniel Okrent, wrote a piece in which he concluded that the Times did have a liberal bias in coverage of certain social issue such as gay marriage. He claimed that this bias reflected the paper's cosmopolitanism, which arose naturally from its roots as a hometown paper of New York City.
Web presence
The Times has had a strong presence on the Web since 1995, and has been ranked one of the top Web sites. Accessing some articles requires registration, though this can be bypassed by using a link generator or in some cases through Times RSS feeds. [New York Times Link Generator (presented by reddit)] The website had 555 million pageviews in March 2005.
The domain nytimes.com attracted at least 146 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.[New York Times attracts 140m visitors online yearly] NYT Company consolidation (which includes About.com) is the 12th most-visited parent company, with 37.7 million unique visitors as of March 2006.
In September 2005, the paper decided to begin subscription-based service for daily columns in a program known as TimesSelect, which encompassed many previously free columns. Until being discontinued two years later, TimesSelect cost $7.95 per month or $49.95 per year,
On September 17, 2007, The Times announced that it would stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight the following day, reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.
Times columnists including Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman had criticized TimesSelect,
The Times is also the first newspaper to offer a video game as part of its editorial content, Food Import Folly by Persuasive Games.
The Times Reader is a digital version of the Times. It was created via a collaboration between the newspaper and Microsoft. Times Reader takes the principles of print journalism and applies them to the technique of online reporting. Times Reader uses a series of technologies developed by Microsoft and their Windows Presentation Foundation team. It was announced in Seattle in April 2006 by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., Bill Gates, and Tom Bodkin.
Major sections
The newspaper is organized in three sections including the magazine, some like the Metro Section, are only found in the editions of the paper distributed in the Tri-State Area and not in the national or Washington, D.C., editions:
;1. News : Includes International, National, Washington, Business, Technology, Science, Health, Sports, The Metro Section (almost always section B), Education, Weather, and Obituaries.
;2. Opinion : Includes Editorials, Op-Eds and Letters to the Editor.
;3. Features : Includes Arts, Movies, Theater, Travel, NYC Guide, Dining & Wine, Home & Garden, Fashion & Style, Crossword, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, and Week in Review
Style
When referring to people, the Times generally uses honorifics, rather than unadorned last names (except in the sports pages). The newspaper's 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 eight column format years after other papers had switched to six, 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-right hand column, on the main page.
The typefaces used for the headlines are custom variations of Cheltenham. The running text is set at 8.7 point Imperial.[History of NYT nameplate. Typophile.com. May 7 2006. Retrieved on November 29 2007.]
Recent Changes
Joining a roster of other major American newspapers in recent years, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, The New York Times announced on July 18, 2006 that it would be narrowing the size of its paper by one and a half inches. In an era of dwindling circulation and significant advertising revenue losses for most print versions of American newspapers, the move, which was also announced would result in a five percent reduction in news coverage, would have a target savings of $12 million a year for the paper. [NY Times Advertisement]
The change from the traditional 54-inches broadsheet style to a more compact 48-inch web width was addressed by both Executive Editor Bill Keller and The New York Times' 'President Scott Heekin-Canedy in memos to the staff.
Keller defended the "more reader-friendly" move indicating that in cutting out the "flabby or redundant prose in longer pieces" the reduction would make for a better paper. Similarly, Keller confronted the challenges of covering news with "less room" by proposing more "rigorous editing" and promised an ongoing commitment to "hard-hitting, ground-breaking journalism". [New York Times to Cut Size 5 Percent; Keller Says Paper Better Off Smaller | The New York Observer]
The official change went in to effect on August 6, 2007.
Comics
Aside from a weekly roundup of reprints of editorial cartoons from other newspapers, the Times does not have its own staff editorial cartoonist, nor does it feature a comics page or Sunday comics section.
The New York Times is printed at the following sites:
College Point, N.Y.; Edison, N.J.; Billerica, Mass.; Canton, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Chicago, Ill.; Columbia, Mo.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Springfield, Va.; Gastonia, N.C.; Spartanburg, S.C.; Atlanta, Ga.; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Lakeland, Fla.; Austin, Tex.; Kent, Wash.; Concord, Calif.; Torrance, Calif.; Denver, Colo.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Toronto, Ontario.
Ownership
The Ochs-Sulzberger family, one of the United States' great newspaper dynasties, has owned the Times since 1896. After the publisher went public in the 1960s, the family continued to exert control through its ownership of the vast majority of Class B voting shares. Class A shareholders cannot vote on many important matters relating to the company, while Class B shareholders can vote on all matters.
Dual-class structures caught on in the mid-20th century as families such as the Grahams of the Washington Post Company sought to gain access to public capital without losing control. Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, had a similar structure and was controlled by the Bancroft family (it was bought by the News Corporation in 2007).
Major Class A shareholders, as of December 31, 2006, include the Sulzberger family (19%), T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. (14.99%), Private Capital Management Inc. (9.34%), MFS Investment Management (8.28%) and Morgan Stanley Investment Management Inc. (7.15%).
The Ochs-Sulzberger family trust controls roughly 88 percent of the company's class B shares.
Publisher
 Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. (1992- )
Other notable personnel
Michael R. Gordon - Chief Military Correspondent, winner of George Polk Award
Michiko Kakutani and Christopher Lehman-Haupt - Book Reviewers
Sia Michel - pop music editor
Jon Pareles - pop music critic
Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly, authors of The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage.
Neil Strauss - freelance music writer
Philip Taubman - national security correspondent
David E. Sanger - current White House correspondent
Don Van Natta, Jr. - investigative correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner
Sheryl WuDunn - industry and international business editor and Pulitzer Prize winner
Frank Bruni - chief restaurant critic
Eric Asimov - chief wine critic
David Pogue - personal technology columnist, blogger
A.O. Scott, Manohla Dargis, and Stephen Holden - film critics
Patrick Tyler - chief correspondent
Ben Brantley - chief theater critic
Publishers
Adolph Ochs (1896-1935)
Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1935-1961)
Orvil Dryfoos (1961-1963)
Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger (1963-1992)
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. (1992-present)
Executive editors
Turner Catledge (1964-1968)
James Reston (1968-1969)
position vacant (1969-1976)
A.M. Rosenthal (1977-1986)
Max Frankel (1986-1994)
Joseph Lelyveld (1994-2001)
Howell Raines (2001-2003)
Other personnel
Dith Pran - photojournalist
Kurt Eichenwald - former business reporter
Sydney Schanberg - Pulitzer Prize winner, twice winner of George Polk Award
Linda Greenhouse - Pulitzer Prize winning U.S. Supreme Court correspondent
John Bertram Oakes - former editor of the editorial page (1961-1976), credited with creating the modern op-ed page
Howard Thompson - film critic
Adam Clymer, former correspondent in Washington, D.C.
Carr Van Anda, managing editor, 1904-1924
Jayson Blair, former Times journalist who was forced to quit when caught plagiarizing and fabricating material for his stories["Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception", The New York Times, May 11, 2003. Accessed July 30, 2008.]
See also
CIA leak grand jury investigation
Democracy Now! Special: "How the Pentagon Papers Came to Be Published by the Beacon Press: Mike Gravel, Daniel Ellsberg, and Robert West (audio/video and transcript)
Lies of Our Times
Media of New York City
New York Times Best Seller list
Pentagon Papers
Valerie Plame affair
Further reading
Amster, Linda; and Dylan Loeb McClain. Kill Duck Before Serving: Red Faces at The New York Times: A Collection of the Newspaper's Most Interesting, Embarrassing and Off-Beat Corrections. New York: St. Martin's, 2002. ISBN 0312284276 ISBN 978-0312284275
Berry, Nicholas O. Foreign Policy and the Press: An Analysis of the New York Times' Coverage of U.S. Foreign Policy (Greenwood. 1990)
Calhoun, Chris, ed. 52 McGs.: The Best Obituaries from Legendary New York Times Reporter Robert McG. Thomas. New York: Scribner, 2001. ISBN 0743215621 ISBN 978-0743215626
Davis, Elmer. History of the New York Times, 1851-1921 (1921)
Hess, John. My Times: A Memoir of Dissent, Seven Stories Press, 2003, cloth, ISBN 1-58322-604-4; trade paperback, Seven Stories Press, 2003, ISBN 1-58322-622-2
Jones, Alex S. and Susan E. Tifft. The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times. Back Bay Books, 2000, ISBN 0-316-83631-1.
Members of the staff of The New York Times. The Newspaper: Its Making and Its Meaning. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945.
Mnookin, Seth. Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media, Random House, 2004, cloth, ISBN 1-4000-6244-6.
Robertson, Nan. The Girls in the Balcony: Women, Men and The New York Times. Random House, 1992. ISBN 039458452X ISBN 978-0394584522
Siegal, Allan M. and William G. Connolly The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, revised edition. New York: Times Books, 1999. ISBN 0-8129-6388-1. Self-indexed.
Talese, Gay. The Kingdom and the Power, World Publishing Company, 1969, ISBN 0-8446-6284-4.
External links
The New York Times on the Web
Official history of the Times
Daniel Okrent, "THE PUBLIC EDITOR; Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" New York Times, July 25 2004
Fit and Unfit to Print: the Wall Street Journal replies to the Times on the subject of the press's obligations in wartime
|
|
|
|
This section is sponsored by:
The New York Times
The New York Times Info
www.givemearticles.com
the new york times
Don't just search for the new york times, find results.
www.ask.com
The New York Times
Find The New York Times info here!
www.dealrain.com
Laptops
Find a great deal on a Laptop Computer by browsing our Laptop Computer listings.
www.LaptopComputersInfo.com
Complete Computer Types & Its Part
Find Computer Type& Parts that you Need. Easy Deal at Low Price!
1st-in-Computers.com
Laptops
Laptops Info
www.givemearticles.com
laptops
Don't just search for laptops, find results.
www.ask.com
laptops
Search for laptops here.
www.aywoh.com
|
