''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily
newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
based in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid
digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular
podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...
s such as ''
The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by
Henry Jarvis Raymond
Henry Jarvis Raymond (January 24, 1820 – June 18, 1869) was an American journalist, politician, and co-founder of ''The New York Times'', which he founded with George Jones. He was a member of the New York State Assembly, Lieutenant Governor ...
and
George Jones
George Glenn Jones (September 12, 1931 – April 26, 2013) was an American country musician, singer, and songwriter. He achieved international fame for his long list of hit records, including his best-known song "He Stopped Loving Her Today", ...
, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won
132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper,
and has long been regarded as a national "
newspaper of record
A newspaper of record is a major national newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative and independent; they are thus "newspapers of record by reputation" and include some of the o ...
".
For print it is ranked
18th in the world by circulation and
3rd in the U.S.
The paper is owned by
the New York Times Company
The New York Times Company is an American mass media company that publishes ''The New York Times''. Its headquarters are in Manhattan, New York City.
History
The company was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones in New York City. T ...
, which is
publicly traded
A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (list ...
. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded.
A. G. Sulzberger
Arthur Gregg Sulzberger (born August 5, 1980) is an American journalist serving as chairman of The New York Times Company and publisher of its flagship newspaper, ''The New York Times''.
Early life and education
Sulzberger was born in Washingt ...
, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the paper.
Since the mid-1970s, ''The New York Times'' has expanded its
layout
Layout may refer to:
* Page layout, the arrangement of visual elements on a page
** Comprehensive layout (comp), a proposed page layout presented by a designer to their client
* Layout (computing), the process of calculating the position of obje ...
and organization, adding special weekly sections on various topics supplementing the regular news, editorials, sports, and features. Since 2008,
the ''Times'' has been organized into the following sections:
News
News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the tes ...
,
Editorial
An editorial, or leading article (UK) or leader (UK) is an article written by the senior editorial people or publisher of a newspaper, magazine, or any other written document, often unsigned. Australian and major United States newspapers, suc ...
s/
Opinions
An opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement that is not conclusive, rather than facts, which are true statements.
Definition
A given opinion may deal with subjective matters in which there is no conclusive finding, or it may deal with f ...
-
Columns
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...
/
Op-Ed
An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page", is a written prose piece, typically published by a North-American newspaper or magazine, which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board. O ...
, New York (metropolitan),
Business
Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...
,
Sports
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, th ...
,
Arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...
,
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
,
Styles, Home, Travel, and other features. On Sundays, the ''Times'' is supplemented by the ''
Sunday Review Sunday Review is the opinion section of ''The New York Times''. It contains columns by a number of regular contributors (such as David Brooks and Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Dis ...
'' (formerly the ''Week in Review''), ''
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'', ''
The New York Times Magazine
''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine Supplement (publishing), supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted man ...
'', and ''
T: The New York Times Style Magazine''. The
editorial pages of ''The New York Times'' are typically
liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
in their positions.
History
Origins
''The New York Times'' was founded as the ''New-York Daily Times'' on September 18, 1851. Founded by journalist and politician
Henry Jarvis Raymond
Henry Jarvis Raymond (January 24, 1820 – June 18, 1869) was an American journalist, politician, and co-founder of ''The New York Times'', which he founded with George Jones. He was a member of the New York State Assembly, Lieutenant Governor ...
and former banker
George Jones
George Glenn Jones (September 12, 1931 – April 26, 2013) was an American country musician, singer, and songwriter. He achieved international fame for his long list of hit records, including his best-known song "He Stopped Loving Her Today", ...
, the ''Times'' was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. Early investors in the company included
Edwin B. Morgan,
Christopher Morgan,
and Edward B. Wesley. Sold for a penny (), the inaugural edition attempted to address various speculations on its purpose and positions that preceded its release:
In 1852, the newspaper started a western division, ''The Times of California'', which arrived whenever a
mail boat
Mail boats or postal boats are a boat or ship used for the delivery of mail and sometimes transportation of goods, people and vehicles in communities where bodies of water commonly separate or separated settlements, towns or cities often where b ...
from New York docked in
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. The effort failed once local California newspapers came into prominence.
On September 14, 1857, the newspaper officially shortened its name to ''The New-York Times''. The hyphen in the city name was dropped on December 1, 1896. On April 21, 1861, ''The New York Times'' began publishing a Sunday edition to offer daily coverage of the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
.
The main office of ''The New York Times'' was attacked during the
New York City draft riots
The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863), sometimes referred to as the Manhattan draft riots and known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan, widely regarded as the culmination of white working-cla ...
. The riots, sparked by the institution of a draft for the
Union Army
During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. st ...
, began on July 13, 1863. On "
Newspaper Row
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports an ...
", across from
City Hall
In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...
, co-founder
Henry Raymond
Henry Jarvis Raymond (January 24, 1820 – June 18, 1869) was an American journalist, politician, and co-founder of ''The New York Times'', which he founded with George Jones. He was a member of the New York State Assembly, Lieutenant Governor ...
stopped the rioters with
Gatling gun
The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon.
The Gatling gun's operation centered on a cyc ...
s, early machine guns, one of which he wielded himself. The mob diverted, instead attacking the headquarters of abolitionist publisher
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American newspaper editor and publisher who was the founder and newspaper editor, editor of the ''New-York Tribune''. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressm ...
's ''
New York Tribune
The ''New-York Tribune'' was an American newspaper founded in 1841 by editor Horace Greeley. It bore the moniker ''New-York Daily Tribune'' from 1842 to 1866 before returning to its original name. From the 1840s through the 1860s it was the domi ...
'' until being forced to flee by the
Brooklyn City Police, who had crossed the
East River
The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...
to help the
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
authorities.
In 1869, Henry Raymond died, and George Jones took over as publisher.
The newspaper's influence grew in 1870 and 1871, when it published a series of exposés on
William Tweed
William Magear Tweed (April 3, 1823 – April 12, 1878), often erroneously referred to as William "Marcy" Tweed (see below), and widely known as "Boss" Tweed, was an American politician most notable for being the political boss of Tammany ...
, leader of the city's
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to:
*Democratic Party (United States)
Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to:
Active parties Africa
*Botswana Democratic Party
*Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea
*Gabonese Democratic Party
*Demo ...
— popularly known as "
Tammany Hall
Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It became the main loc ...
" (from its early-19th-century meeting headquarters) — that led to the end of the Tweed Ring's domination of New York's City Hall. Tweed had offered ''The New York Times'' five million dollars (equivalent to million dollars in ) to not publish the story.
In the 1880s, ''The New York Times'' gradually transitioned from supporting
Republican Party
Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party.
Republican Party may also refer to:
Africa
*Republican Party (Liberia)
* Republican Part ...
candidates in its editorials to becoming more politically independent and analytical.
In 1884, the paper supported
Democrat
Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to:
Politics
*A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people.
*A member of a Democratic Party:
**Democratic Party (United States) (D)
**Democratic ...
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...
(former mayor of
Buffalo and
governor of New York
The governor of New York is the head of government of the U.S. state of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military forces. The governor has ...
) in his
first presidential campaign.
While this move cost ''The New York Times'' a portion of its readership among its more Republican readers (revenue declined from $188,000 to $56,000 from 1883 to 1884), the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years.
Ochs era
After George Jones died in 1891,
Charles Ransom Miller
Charles Ransom Miller (January 17, 1849 – July 18, 1922) was an editor-in-chief of ''The New York Times''. He was born in Hanover, New Hampshire to Elijah and Chastina Hoyt Miller. Miller attended Dartmouth College and graduated in 1872. After wo ...
and other ''New York Times'' editors raised $1 million (equivalent to $ million in ) to buy the ''Times'', printing it under the New York Times Publishing Company. The newspaper found itself in a financial crisis by the
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was an economic depression in the United States that began in 1893 and ended in 1897. It deeply affected every sector of the economy, and produced political upheaval that led to the political realignment of 1896 and the pres ...
,
and by 1896, the newspaper had a circulation of less than 9,000 and was losing $1,000 a day. That year,
Adolph Ochs
Adolph Simon Ochs (March 12, 1858 – April 8, 1935) was an American newspaper publisher and former owner of ''The New York Times'' and ''The Chattanooga Times'' (now the ''Chattanooga Times Free Press'').
Early life and career
Ochs was born t ...
, the publisher of the ''
Chattanooga Times
The ''Chattanooga Times Free Press'' is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is distributed in the metropolitan Chattanooga region of southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. It is one of Tennessee's maj ...
'', gained a controlling interest in the company for $75,000.
Shortly after assuming control of the paper, Ochs coined the paper's slogan, "All The News That's Fit To Print". This slogan has endured, appearing in the paper since September 1896, and has been printed in a box in the upper left hand corner of the front page since early 1897.
The slogan was seen as a jab at competing publications, such as
Joseph Pulitzer
Joseph Pulitzer ( ; born Pulitzer József, ; April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911) was a Hungarian-American politician and newspaper publisher of the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' and the ''New York World''. He became a leading national figure in ...
's ''
New York World
The ''New York World'' was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers. It was a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publi ...
'' and
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboya ...
's ''
New York Journal
:''Includes coverage of New York Journal-American and its predecessors New York Journal, The Journal, New York American and New York Evening Journal''
The ''New York Journal-American'' was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 t ...
'', which were known for a lurid, sensationalist and often inaccurate reporting of facts and opinions, described by the end of the century as "
yellow journalism
Yellow journalism and yellow press are American terms for journalism and associated newspapers that present little or no legitimate, well-researched news while instead using eye-catching headlines for increased sales. Techniques may include e ...
".
Under Ochs' guidance, aided by
Carr Van Anda
Carr Vattal Van Anda (December 2, 1864 – January 29, 1945) was the managing editor of ''The New York Times'' under Adolph Ochs, from 1904 to 1932.
Biography
Van Anda was born in Georgetown, Ohio to Frederick Van Anda and Mariah Davis. He m ...
, ''The New York Times'' achieved international scope, circulation, and reputation; Sunday circulation went from under 9,000 in 1896 to 780,000 in 1934.
Van Anda also created the newspaper's photo library, now colloquially referred to as "
the morgue
''The Morgue'' is a 2008 direct-to-DVD horror film directed by Halder Gomes
Halder Catunda Gomes (born 15 February 1967) is a Brazilian filmmaker, director, producer and martial artist.
Biography
Born in the capital of Ceará, he spent h ...
." In 1904, during the
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...
, ''The New York Times'', along with ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'', received the first on-the-spot
wireless
Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...
telegraph
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
transmission from a naval battle: a report of the destruction of the
Russian Navy's
Baltic Fleet
, image = Great emblem of the Baltic fleet.svg
, image_size = 150
, caption = Baltic Fleet Great ensign
, dates = 18 May 1703 – present
, country =
, allegiance = (1703–1721) (1721–1917) (1917–1922) (1922–1991)(1991–present)
...
, at the
Battle of Port Arthur
The of 8–9 February 1904 marked the commencement of the Russo-Japanese War. It began with a surprise night attack by a squadron of Japanese destroyers on the neutral Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur, Manchuria, and continued with an en ...
, from the press-boat ''
Haimun''. In 1910, the first air delivery of ''The New York Times'' to
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
began.
In 1919, ''The New York Times'' first trans-Atlantic delivery to
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
occurred by
dirigible balloon
An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air.
In early ...
. In 1920, during the
1920 Republican National Convention
The 1920 Republican National Convention nominated Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding for president and Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge for vice president. The convention was held in Chicago, Illinois, at the Chicago Coliseum from June 8 to J ...
, a "4 A.M. Airplane Edition" was sent to
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
by plane, so it could be in the hands of convention delegates by evening.
In 1920,
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 – December 14, 1974) was an American writer, reporter and political commentator. With a career spanning 60 years, he is famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the te ...
and Charles Merz published
A Test of the News ''A Test of the News'' is a study of the objectivity and neutrality of press coverage, written by Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz, later editor of ''The New York Times''. It was prepared with the assistance of Faye Albertson Lippmann, Lippmann's fi ...
, about New York Times coverage of the Russian Revolution. They concluded that its news stories were not based on facts, but "were determined by the hopes of the men who made up the news organisations." The newspaper referred to events that had not taken place, atrocities that did not exist, and reported no fewer than 91 times that the Bolshevik regime was on the verge of collapse.
Post-war expansion
Ochs died in 1935 and was succeeded as publisher by his son-in-law,
Arthur Hays Sulzberger
Arthur Hays Sulzberger (September 12, 1891December 11, 1968) was the publisher of ''The New York Times'' from 1935 to 1961. During that time, daily circulation rose from 465,000 to 713,000 and Sunday circulation from 745,000 to 1.4 million; the st ...
. Under his leadership, and that of his son-in-law (and successor),
Orvil Dryfoos
Orvil Eugene Dryfoos (November 8, 1912 – May 25, 1963) was the publisher of ''The New York Times'' from 1961 to his death. He entered ''The Times'' family via his marriage to Marian Sulzberger, daughter of then-publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger ...
, the paper extended its breadth and reach, beginning in the 1940s. The
crossword
A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answ ...
began appearing regularly in 1942, and the fashion section first appeared in 1946. ''The New York Times'' began an international edition in 1946. (The international edition stopped publishing in 1967, when ''The New York Times'' joined the owners of the ''
New York Herald Tribune
The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...
'' and ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' to publish the ''
International Herald Tribune
The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France for international English-speaking readers. It had the aim of becoming "the world's first global newspaper" and could fairly be said ...
'' in Paris.)
After only two years as publisher, Dryfoos died in 1963 and was succeeded by his brother-in-law,
Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger, who led the ''Times'' until 1992 and continued the expansion of the paper.
''New York Times v. Sullivan'' (1964)
The paper's involvement in a 1964
libel
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
case helped bring one of the key
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
decisions supporting
freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic News media, media, especially publication, published materials, should be conside ...
, ''New York Times Co. v. Sullivan''. In it, the United States Supreme Court established the "
actual malice
Actual malice in United States law is a legal requirement imposed upon public officials or public figures when they file suit for libel (defamatory printed communications). Compared to other individuals who are less well known to the general publi ...
" standard for press reports about public officials or
public figure
A public figure is a person who has achieved notoriety, prominence or fame within a society, whether through achievement, luck, action, or in some cases through no purposeful action of their own,
In the context of defamation actions (libel and s ...
s to be considered
defamatory
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
or
libel
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
ous. The malice standard requires the plaintiff in a defamation or libel case to prove the publisher of the statement knew the statement was false or acted in
reckless disregard
''Reckless Disregard'' is a 1985 American film that was directed by Harvey Hart. It stars Tess Harper as a lawyer that must defend a physician against claims of selling prescriptions. After accepting the part Harper commented that the role was dif ...
of its truth or falsity. Because of the high
burden of proof on the plaintiff, and difficulty proving malicious intent, such cases by public figures rarely succeed.
The ''Pentagon Papers'' (1971)
In 1971, the ''Pentagon Papers'', a secret
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secu ...
history of the United States' political and military involvement in the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
from 1945 to 1967, were given ("leaked") to
Neil Sheehan
Cornelius Mahoney Sheehan (October 27, 1936 – January 7, 2021) was an American journalist. As a reporter for ''The New York Times'' in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified ''Pentagon Papers'' from Daniel Ellsberg. His series of articles reve ...
of ''The New York Times'' by former
State Department
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...
official
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is an American political activist, and former United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the ''Pent ...
, with his friend
Anthony Russo assisting in copying them. ''The New York 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 airstrikes over
Laos
Laos (, ''Lāo'' )), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ, French: République démocratique populaire lao), is a socialist ...
, raids along the coast of
North Vietnam
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...
, and offensive actions were taken by the
U.S. Marines
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the Marines, maritime land force military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary warfare, exped ...
well before the public was told about the actions, all while President
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
had been promising not to expand the war. The document increased the
credibility gap
Credibility gap is a term that came into wide use with journalism, political and public discourse in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, it was most frequently used to describe public skepticism about the Lyndon B. Johnson a ...
for the
U.S. government
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fede ...
, and hurt efforts by the
Nixon administration
Richard Nixon's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 37th president of the United States began with First inauguration of Richard Nixon, his first inauguration on January 20, 1969, and ended when he resigned on August 9, 1974 ...
to fight the ongoing war.
When ''The New York Times'' began publishing its series, President
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
became incensed. His words to
National Security
National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military atta ...
Advisor
Henry Kissinger
Henry Alfred Kissinger (; ; born Heinz Alfred Kissinger, May 27, 1923) is a German-born American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presid ...
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 New York Times'' to stop publishing,
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
John Mitchell and President Nixon obtained a federal court injunction that ''The New York 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
Ben-hur Haig Bagdikian (January 30, 1920 – March 11, 2016) was an Armenian-American journalist, news media critic and commentator, and university professor.
An Armenian genocide survivor, Bagdikian moved to the United States as an infant and ...
, a ''Post'' editor, had obtained portions of the papers from Ellsberg. That day the ''Post'' received a call from
William Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist ( ; October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years, first as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and then as the 16th chief justice from ...
, an assistant U.S. Attorney General for the
Office of Legal Counsel
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is an office in the United States Department of Justice that assists the Attorney General's position as legal adviser to the President and all executive branch agencies. It drafts legal opinions of the Attorney ...
, asking them to stop publishing. When the ''Post'' refused, the
U.S. Justice Department
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
sought another injunction. The
U.S. District court
The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...
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
''New York Times Co. v. United States'', 403 U.S. 713 (1971), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on the First Amendment right of Freedom of the Press. The ruling made it possible for ''The New York Times'' and ''The ...
''. 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
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
enshrines an absolute
right to free speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The rights, right to freedom of expression has been ...
, many felt it a lukewarm victory, offering little protection for future publishers when claims of
national security
National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military atta ...
were at stake.
Late 1970s–1990s
In the 1970s, the paper introduced a number of new lifestyle sections, including Weekend and Home, with the aim of attracting more advertisers and readers. Many criticized the move for betraying the paper's mission. On September 7, 1976, the paper switched from an eight-column format to a six-column format. The overall page width stayed the same, with each column becoming wider.
On September 14, 1987, the ''Times'' printed the heaviest-ever newspaper, at over and 1,612 pages.
In 1992,
"Punch" Sulzberger stepped down as publisher; his son,
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.
Arthur Ochs "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. (born September 22, 1951) is an American journalist.
Sulzberger was the chairman of The New York Times Company from 1997 to 2020, and the publisher of ''The New York Times'' from 1992 to 2018.
Early life and ...
, succeeded him, first as publisher and then as chairman of the board in 1997. The ''Times'' was one of the last newspapers to adopt
color photography
Color photography is photography that uses media capable of capturing and reproducing colors. By contrast, black-and-white or gray-monochrome photography records only a single channel of luminance (brightness) and uses media capable only of ...
, with the first color photograph on the front page appearing on October 16, 1997.
Digital era
Early digital content
''The New York Times'' switched to a digital production process sometime before 1980, but only began preserving the resulting digital text that year.
In 1983, the ''Times'' sold the electronic rights to its articles to
LexisNexis
LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer informa ...
. As the online distribution of news increased in the 1990s, the ''Times'' decided not to renew the deal and in 1994 the newspaper regained electronic rights to its articles. On January 22, 1996, NYTimes.com began publishing.
2000s
In August 2007, the paper reduced the physical size of its print edition, cutting the page width from to a . This followed similar moves by a roster of other newspapers in the previous ten years, including ''
USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...
'', ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', and ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''. The move resulted in a 5% reduction in news space, but (in an era of dwindling circulation and significant advertising revenue losses) also saved about $12 million a year.
In September 2008, ''The New York Times'' announced that it would be combining certain sections effective October 6, 2008, in editions printed in the
New York metropolitan area
The New York metropolitan area, also commonly referred to as the Tri-State area, is the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass, at , and one of the list of most populous metropolitan areas, most populous urban agg ...
.
The changes folded the Metro Section into the main International / National news section and combined Sports and Business (except Saturday through Monday, while Sports continues to be printed as a standalone section). This change also included having the Metro section called New York outside of the Tri-State Area. The presses used by ''The New York Times'' can allow four sections to be printed simultaneously; as the paper includes more than four sections on all days except for Saturday, the sections were required to be printed separately in an early press run and collated together. The changes allowed ''The New York Times'' to print in four sections Monday through Wednesday, in addition to Saturday. ''The New York Times'' announcement stated that the number of news pages and employee positions would remain unchanged, with the paper realizing cost savings by cutting overtime expenses.
Because of its declining sales largely attributed to the rise of online news sources, favored especially by younger readers, and the decline of advertising revenue, the newspaper had been going through a downsizing for several years, offering buyouts to workers and cutting expenses,
in common with a general trend among print news media. Following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million.
In 2009, the newspaper began production of local inserts in regions outside of the New York area. Beginning October 16, 2009, a two-page "Bay Area" insert was added to copies of the
Northern California
Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...
edition on Fridays and Sundays. The newspaper commenced production of a similar Friday and Sunday insert to the Chicago edition on November 20, 2009. The inserts consist of local news, policy, sports, and culture pieces, usually supported by local advertisements.
2010s
In December 2012, the ''Times'' published "
Snow Fall
Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes.
It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout ...
", a six-part article about the
2012 Tunnel Creek avalanche which integrated videos, photos, and interactive graphics and was hailed as a watershed moment for online journalism.
In 2013,
How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk" an interactive quiz created by intern
Josh Katz,
based on the Harvard Dialect Survey, which collected responses of more than 50,000 people answering 122 questions about the way they said different things across the United States
became the ''Times'' most popular piece of content of the year.
[
In 2016, reporters for the newspaper were reportedly the target of ]cybersecurity
Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, the ...
breaches. The Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
was reportedly investigating the attacks. The cybersecurity breaches have been described as possibly being related to cyberattack
A cyberattack is any offensive maneuver that targets computer information systems, computer networks, infrastructures, or personal computer devices. An attacker is a person or process that attempts to access data, functions, or other restricted ...
s that targeted other institutions, such as the Democratic National Committee
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the governing body of the United States Democratic Party. The committee coordinates strategy to support Democratic Party candidates throughout the country for local, state, and national office, as well a ...
.
During the 2016 presidential election, the ''Times'' played an important role in elevating the Hillary Clinton emails controversy into the most important subject of media coverage in the election which Clinton would lose narrowly to Donald Trump. The controversy received more media coverage than any other topic during the presidential campaign. Clinton and other observers argue that coverage of the emails controversy contributed to her loss in the election. According to a Columbia Journalism Review analysis, "''in just six days,'' The New York Times ''ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton's emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election'' (and that does not include the three additional articles on October 18, and November 6 and 7, or the two articles on the emails taken from John Podesta)."
In October 2018, the ''Times'' published a 14,218-word investigation into Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
's "self-made" fortune and tax avoidance
Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdict ...
, an 18-month project based on examination of 100,000 pages of documents. The extensive article ran as an eight-page feature in the print edition and also was adapted into a shortened 2,500 word listicle
In journalism and blogging, a listicle is an article that is structured as a list, which is often fleshed out with additional text relating to each item. A typical listicle will prominently feature a cardinal number in its title, with subsequent su ...
featuring its key takeaways. After the midweek front-page story, the ''Times'' also republished the piece as a 12-page "special report" section in the Sunday paper. During the lengthy investigation, Showtime
Showtime or Show Time may refer to:
Film
* ''Showtime'' (film), a 2002 American action/comedy film
* ''Showtime'' (video), a 1995 live concert video by Blur
Television Networks and channels
* Showtime Networks, a division of Paramount Global w ...
cameras followed the ''Times'' three investigative reporters for a half-hour documentary called ''The Family Business: Trump and Taxes'', which aired the following Sunday. The report won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting
The Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting has been presented since 1998, for a distinguished example of explanatory reporting that illuminates a significant and complex subject, demonstrating mastery of the subject, lucid writing and clear pr ...
.
In May 2019, ''The New York Times'' announced that it would present a television news program based on news from its individual reporters stationed around the world and that it would premiere on FX and Hulu
Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television serie ...
.
2020s
In August 2021, the paper announced an effort to make 18 newsletters available only to subscribers, even though some of the most popular ones would remain free. Part of this was in response to competition from Substack
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack ...
.
In January 2022, the New York Times Company announced that it would acquire ''The Athletic
''The Athletic'' is a subscription-based sports website that provides national and local coverage in 47 North American cities as well as the United Kingdom. ''The Athletic'' also covers national stories from top professional and college sports ...
'', a subscription-based sports news website. The $550 million deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022, and ''The Athletic'''s co-founders, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, would stay with the publication, which would continue to be run separately from the ''Times''. Recode
''Recode'' (formerly ''Re/code'') is a technology news website that focused on the business of Silicon Valley. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher founded it in January 2014, after they left Dow Jones and the similar website they had previously c ...
/ Vox reported that this acquisition was part of an effort for the paper to get a younger, more diverse readership, as were offerings like games, cooking, and audio. The same month, the paper announced it was acquiring Wordle
''Wordle'' is a Browser game, web-based word game created and developed by Welsh people, Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle, and owned and published by The New York Times Company since 2022. Players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word ...
, a relatively new game that became popular rather quickly and that would remain free "initially."
In April 2022, ''The New York Times'' published a three-part 20,000-word investigative series on Fox News host Tucker Carlson
Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (born May 16, 1969) is an American television host, conservative political commentator and writer who has hosted the nightly political talk show ''Tucker Carlson Tonight'' on Fox News since 2016.
Carlson began h ...
called "American Nationalist". The investigative series documents Carlson's rise to prominence and his rhetoric on immigration, race relations and the COVID-19 pandemic. Carlson responded by saying that he has not read "American Nationalist" and does not plan to. He also denied allegations from the ''Times'' about obsessing over ratings, saying that "I've never read the ratings a single day in my life. I don't even know how. Ask anyone at Fox." and that "Most of the big positions I've taken in the past five years — against the neocons, the vax and the war n Ukraine
N, or n, is the fourteenth Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphabet# ...
— have been very unpopular with our audience at first."
In December 2022, over 1,000 ''New York Times'' staffers staged a strike for the first time in over 40 years.
Headquarters building
The newspaper's first building was located at 113 Nassau Street in New York City. In 1854, it moved to 138 Nassau Street, and in 1858 to 41 Park Row
41 Park Row, also 147 Nassau Street and formerly the New York Times Building, is an office building in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City, across from City Hall and the Civic Center. It occupies a plot abutting Nassau Street ...
, making it the first newspaper in New York City housed in a building built specifically for its use.
The newspaper moved its headquarters to the Times Tower, located at 1475 Broadway
Broadway may refer to:
Theatre
* Broadway Theatre (disambiguation)
* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
**Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
in 1904, in an area then called Longacre Square, that was later renamed Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent ...
in the newspaper's honor. The top of the building — now known as One Times Square
One Times Square (also known as 1475 Broadway, the New York Times Building, the New York Times Tower, or simply as the Times Tower) is a 25-story, skyscraper on Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by ...
— is the site of the New Year's Eve
In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve, also known as Old Year's Day or Saint Sylvester's Day in many countries, is the evening or the entire day of the last day of the year, on 31 December. The last day of the year is commonly referred to ...
tradition of lowering a lighted ball, which was begun by the paper. The building is also known for its electronic news ticker
A news ticker (sometimes called a "crawler", "crawl", "slide", "zipper", or "ticker tape") is a horizontal or vertical (depending on a language's writing system) text-based display either in the form of a graphic that typically resides in the lo ...
— popularly known as "The Zipper" — where headlines crawl around the outside of the building. It is still in use, but has been operated by Dow Jones & Company
Dow Jones & Company, Inc. is an American publishing firm owned by News Corp and led by CEO Almar Latour.
The company publishes ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''Barron's'', ''MarketWatch'', ''Mansion Global'', ''Financial News'' and ''Private Equ ...
since 1995. After nine years in its Times Square tower, the newspaper had an annex built at 229 West 43rd Street
229 West 43rd Street (formerly The New York Times Building, The New York Times Annex, and the Times Square Building) is an 18-story office building in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1913 and expanded in ...
. After several expansions, the 43rd Street building became the newspaper's main headquarters in 1960 and the Times Tower on Broadway was sold the following year. It served as the newspaper's main printing plant until 1997, when the newspaper opened a state-of-the-art printing plant in the College Point section of Queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
.
A decade later, ''The New York Times'' moved its newsroom and businesses headquarters from West 43rd Street to a new tower at 620 Eighth Avenue between West 40th and 41st Streets, in Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, directly across Eighth Avenue from the Port Authority Bus Terminal
The Port Authority Bus Terminal (colloquially known as the Port Authority and by its acronym PABT) is a bus station, bus terminal located in Manhattan in New York City. It is the busiest bus terminal in the world by volume of traffic, serving abo ...
. The new headquarters for the newspaper, known officially as The New York Times Building
The New York Times Building is a 52-story skyscraper at 620 Eighth Avenue (Manhattan), Eighth Avenue, between 40th and 41st Streets, on the west side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Its chief tenant is the New York Times Company, publis ...
but unofficially called the new "Times Tower" by many New Yorkers, is a skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...
designed by Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (20 ...
.
Gender discrimination in employment
Discriminatory
Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
practices used by the paper long restricted women in appointments to editorial positions. The newspaper's first general female reporter was Jane Grant
Jane Grant (May 29, 1892 – March 16, 1972) was a New York City journalist who co-founded ''The New Yorker'' with her first husband, Harold Ross.
Life and career
Jane Grant was born Jeanette Cole Grant in Joplin, Missouri, and grew up and w ...
, who described her experience afterward: "In the beginning I was charged not to reveal the fact that a female had been hired". Other reporters nicknamed her Fluff and she was subjected to considerable hazing
Hazing (American English), initiation, beasting (British English), bastardisation (Australian English), ragging (South Asian English) or deposition refers to any activity expected of someone in joining or participating in a group that humiliates, ...
. Because of her gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
, any promotion was out of the question, according to the then-managing editor. She remained on the staff for fifteen years, interrupted by World War I.
In 1935, Anne McCormick
Anne O'Hare McCormick (16 May 1880 – 29 May 1954) was an English-American journalist who worked as a foreign news correspondent for ''The New York Times.'' In an era where the field was almost exclusively "a man's world", she became the first w ...
wrote to Arthur Hays Sulzberger
Arthur Hays Sulzberger (September 12, 1891December 11, 1968) was the publisher of ''The New York Times'' from 1935 to 1961. During that time, daily circulation rose from 465,000 to 713,000 and Sunday circulation from 745,000 to 1.4 million; the st ...
: "I hope you won't expect me to revert to 'woman's-point-of-view' stuff." Later, she interviewed major political leaders and appears to have had easier access than her colleagues. Even witnesses of her actions were unable to explain how she gained the interviews she did. Clifton Daniel
Elbert Clifton Daniel, Jr. (September 19, 1912 – February 21, 2000) was an American newspaperman who was the managing editor of ''The New York Times'' from 1964 to 1969. Before assuming the top editorial job at the paper, he served as the ...
said, " fter World War II,I'm sure Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman who served as the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of the Christian Demo ...
called her up and invited her to lunch. She never had to grovel for an appointment."
Covering world leaders' speeches after World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
at the National Press Club (USA), National Press Club was limited to men by a club rule. When women were eventually allowed to hear the speeches directly, they were still not allowed to ask the speakers questions. Men were allowed and did ask, even though some of the women had won Pulitzer Prizes for prior work. ''Times'' reporter Maggie Hunter refused to return to the club after covering one speech on assignment. Nan C. Robertson, Nan Robertson's article on the Union Stock Yards, Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, was read aloud as anonymous by a professor, who then said: "'It will come as a surprise to you, perhaps, that the reporter is a ''girl,'' he began... [G]asps; amazement in the ranks. 'She had used all her senses, not just her eyes, to convey the smell and feel of the stockyards. She chose a difficult subject, an offensive subject. Her imagery was strong enough to revolt you.'" ''The New York Times'' hired Kathleen McLaughlin after ten years at the ''Chicago Tribune'', where "[s]he did a series on maids, going out herself to apply for housekeeping jobs."
Slogan
''The New York Times'' has had one slogan. Since 1896, the newspaper's slogan has been "All the News That's Fit to Print." In 1896, Adolph Ochs
Adolph Simon Ochs (March 12, 1858 – April 8, 1935) was an American newspaper publisher and former owner of ''The New York Times'' and ''The Chattanooga Times'' (now the ''Chattanooga Times Free Press'').
Early life and career
Ochs was born t ...
held a competition to attempt to find a replacement slogan, offering a $100 prize for the best one. Though he later announced that the original would not be changed, the prize would still be awarded. Entries included "News, Not Nausea"; "In One Word: Adequate"; "News Without Noise"; "Out Heralds ''The New York Herald, The Herald'', Informs ''New York World, The World'', and Extinguishes ''The Sun (New York City), The Sun''"; "The Public Press is a Public Trust"; and the winner of the competition, "All the world's news, but not a school for scandal." On May 10, 1960, Wright Patman asked the Federal Trade Commission, FTC to investigate whether ''The New York Times's'' slogan was misleading or false advertising. Within 10 days, the FTC responded that it was not.
Again in 1996, a competition was held to find a new slogan, this time for NYTimes.com. Over 8,000 entries were submitted, with "All the News That's Fit to Print" found to be the best.
Organization
Meredith Kopit Levien has been president and chief executive officer since September 2020.
News staff
In addition to its New York City headquarters, the paper has newsrooms in London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
and Hong Kong. Its Paris newsroom, which had been the headquarters of The New York Times International Edition, the paper's international edition, was closed in 2016, although the city remains home to a news bureau and an advertising office. The paper also has an editing and wire service center in Gainesville, Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
, the newspaper had six news bureaus in the New York region, 14 elsewhere in the United States, and 24 in other countries.
In 2009, Russ Stanton, editor of the ''Los Angeles Times'', a competitor, stated that the newsroom of ''The New York Times'' was twice the size of the ''Los Angeles Times'', which had a newsroom of 600 at the time.
To facilitate their reporting and to hasten an otherwise lengthy process of reviewing many documents during preparation for publication, their interactive news team has adapted optical character recognition technology into a Proprietary software, proprietary tool known as ''Document Helper''. It enables the team to accelerate the processing of documents that need to be reviewed. During March 2019, they documented that this tool enabled them to process 900 documents in less than ten minutes in preparation for reporters to review the contents.
The newspaper's editorial staff, including over 3,000 reporters and media staff, are unionized with NewsGuild. In 2021, the ''Times'' digital technology staff formed a union with NewsGuild, which the company declined to voluntarily recognize.
Ochs-Sulzberger family
In 1896, Adolph Ochs bought ''The New York Times'', a money-losing newspaper, and formed the New York Times Company. The Ochs-Sulzberger family, one of the United States' newspaper dynasties, has owned ''The New York Times'' ever since. The publisher Initial public offering, went public on January 14, 1969, trading at $42 a share on the American Stock Exchange LLC, American Stock Exchange. After this, the family continued to exert control through its ownership of the vast majority of Class B Voting interest, voting shares. Class A shareholders are permitted restrictive voting rights, while Class B shareholders are allowed open voting rights.
The Ochs-Sulzberger family trust controls roughly 88 percent of the company's class B shares. Any alteration to the dual-class structure must be ratified by six of eight directors who sit on the board of the Ochs-Sulzberger family trust. The trust board members are Daniel H. Cohen, James M. Cohen, Lynn G. Dolnick, Susan W. Dryfoos, Michael Golden, Eric M. A. Lax, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., and Cathy J. Sulzberger.
Turner Catledge, the top editor at ''The New York Times'' from 1952 to 1968, wanted to hide the ownership influence. Arthur Sulzberger routinely wrote memos to his editor, each containing suggestions, instructions, complaints, and orders. When Catledge would receive these memos, he would erase the publisher's identity before passing them to his subordinates. Catledge thought that if he removed the publisher's name from the memos, it would protect reporters from feeling pressured by the owner.
Public editors
The position of public editor was established in 2003 to "investigate matters of journalistic integrity"; each public editor was to serve a two-year term. The post "was established to receive reader complaints and question ''Times'' journalists on how they make decisions."[Daniel Victor]
New York Times Will Offer Employee Buyouts and Eliminate Public Editor Role
, ''The New York Times'' (May 31, 2017). The impetus for the creation of the public editor position was the Jayson Blair affair. Public editors were: Daniel Okrent (2003–2005), Byron Calame (2005–2007), Clark Hoyt (2007–2010) (served an extra year), Arthur S. Brisbane (2010–2012), Margaret Sullivan (journalist), Margaret Sullivan (2012–2016) (served a four-year term), and Elizabeth Spayd (2016–2017). In 2017, the ''Times'' eliminated the position of public editor.
Content
Editorial stance
The editorial pages of ''The New York Times'' are typically liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
in their position. In mid-2004, the newspaper's then public editor (ombudsman), Daniel Okrent, wrote that "the Op-Ed page editors do an evenhanded job of representing a range of views in the essays from outsiders they publish – but you need an awfully heavy counterweight to balance a page that also bears the work of seven opinionated columnists, only two of whom could be classified as conservative (and, even then, of the conservative subspecies that supports legalization of gay unions and, in the case of William Safire, opposes some central provisions of the Patriot Act)."
''The New York Times'' has not endorsed a Republican Party member for president since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956; since 1960, it has endorsed the Democratic Party nominee in every presidential election (see New York Times presidential endorsements). ''The New York Times'' did endorse incumbent Moderate Republicans (modern United States), moderate Republican mayors of New York City Rudy Giuliani in 1997, and Michael Bloomberg in 2005 and 2009. The ''Times'' also endorsed Republican New York state governor George Pataki for re-election in 2002.
Style
Unlike most U.S. daily newspapers, the ''Times'' relies on its own in-house stylebook rather than AP Stylebook, The Associated Press Stylebook. When referring to people, ''The New York Times'' generally uses honorifics rather than unadorned last names (except in the sports pages, pop culture coverage, and the Book Review and Magazine).
''The New York Times'' printed a display advertisement on its first page on January 6, 2009, breaking tradition at the paper. The advertisement, for CBS, was in color and ran the entire width of the page. The newspaper promised it would place first-page advertisements on only the lower half of the page.
In August 2014, the ''Times'' decided to use the word "torture" to describe incidents in which interrogators "inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort to get information." This was a shift from the paper's previous practice of describing such practices as "harsh" or "brutal" interrogations.
The paper maintains a strict profanity policy. A 2007 review of a concert by the punk band Fucked Up, for example, completely avoided mention of the group's name. The ''Times'' has on occasion published unfiltered video content that includes profanity and Ethnic slur, slurs where it has determined that such video has news value. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, the ''Times'' did print the words "fuck" and "pussy," among others, when reporting on the vulgar statements made by Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
in a Donald Trump and Billy Bush recording, 2005 recording. Then-''Times'' politics editor Carolyn Ryan said: "It's a rare thing for us to use this language in our stories, even in quotes, and we discussed it at length." Ryan said the paper ultimately decided to publish it because of its news value and because "[t]o leave it out or simply describe it seemed awkward and less than forthright to us, especially given that we would be running a video that showed our readers exactly what was said."
Products
Print newspaper
In the absence of a major headline, the day's most important story generally appears in the top-right column, on the main page. The typefaces used for the headlines are custom variations of Cheltenham (typeface), Cheltenham. The running text is set at 8.7 point (typography), point Imperial (typeface), Imperial.
The newspaper is organized into three sections, including the magazine:
# News: Includes International, National, Washington, D.C., Washington, Business, Technology, Science, Health, Sports, The New York metropolitan area, Metro Section, Education, Weather, and Obituaries.
# Opinion: Includes Editorial
An editorial, or leading article (UK) or leader (UK) is an article written by the senior editorial people or publisher of a newspaper, magazine, or any other written document, often unsigned. Australian and major United States newspapers, suc ...
s, Op-eds and Letter to the editor, Letters to the Editor.
# Features: Includes Arts, Movies, Theater, Travel, NYC Guide, Food, Home & Garden, Fashion & Style, The New York Times crossword puzzle, Crossword, ''The New York Times Book Review'','' T: The New York Times Style Magazine'', ''The New York Times Magazine'', and Sunday Review.
Some sections, such as Metro, are only found in the editions of the paper distributed in the New York metropolitan area, New York–New Jersey–Connecticut Tri-state area and not in the national or Washington, D.C., editions. Aside from a weekly roundup of reprints of editorial cartoons from other newspapers, ''The New York Times'' does not have its own staff editorial cartoonist, nor does it feature a comics page or Sunday comics section.
From 1851 to 2017, ''The New York Times'' published around 60,000 print issues containing about 3.5 million pages and 15 million articles.
Like most other List of newspapers in the United States, American newspapers, ''The New York Times'' has experienced a decline in print circulation, circulation. Its printed weekday circulation dropped by percent to 540,000 copies from 2005 to 2017.
''International Edition''
''The New York Times International Edition'' is a print version of the paper tailored for readers outside the United States. Formerly a joint venture with ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' named The International Herald Tribune, ''The New York Times'' took full ownership of the paper in 2002 and has gradually integrated it more closely into its domestic operations.
Website
''The New York Times'' began publishing daily on the World Wide Web on January 22, 1996, "offering readers around the world immediate access to most of the daily newspaper's contents." The website had 555 million pageviews and 15 million unique visitors in March 2005. By March 2020, this had risen to 2.5 billion pageviews and 240 million unique visitors.
, nytimes.com produced 22 of the 50 most popular newspaper blogs.
As of August 2020, the company had 6.5 million paid subscribers, out of which 5.7 million were subscribed to its digital content. In the period April–June 2020, it added 669,000 new digital subscribers.
Food section
The food section is supplemented on the web by properties for home cooks and for out-of-home dining. ''The New York Times'' Cooking (cooking.nytimes.com; also available via iOS app) provides access to more than 17,000 recipes on file , and availability of saving recipes from other sites around the web. The newspaper's restaurant search (nytimes.com/reviews/dining) allows online readers to search NYC area restaurants by cuisine, neighborhood, price, and reviewer rating. ''The New York Times'' has also published several cookbooks, including ''The Essential New York Times Cookbook, The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century'', published in late 2010.
''TimesSelect''
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, though it was free for print copy subscribers and university students and faculty. To avoid this charge, bloggers often reposted TimesSelect material, and at least one site once compiled links of reprinted material.
On September 17, 2007, ''The New York 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'', 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 reading me overseas, like in India ... I feel totally cut off from my audience."
Paywall and digital subscriptions
In 2007, in addition to opening almost the entire site to all readers, ''The New York Times'' news archives from 1987 to the present were made available at no charge to non-subscribers, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain.
Falling print advertising revenue and projections of continued decline resulted in a "metered paywall" being instituted in March 2011, limiting non-subscribers to a monthly allotment of 20 free on-line articles per month. This measure was regarded as modestly successful after garnering several hundred thousand subscriptions and about $100 million in revenue .
Beginning in April 2012, the number of free-access articles was halved from 20 to 10 articles per month. Any reader who wanted to access more would have to pay for a digital subscription. This plan allowed free access for occasional readers. Digital subscription rates for four weeks ranged from $15 to $35 depending on the package selected, with periodic new subscriber promotions offering four-week all-digital access for as low as 99¢. Subscribers to the paper's print edition got full access without any additional fee. Some content, such as the front page and section fronts remained free, as well as the Top News page on mobile apps. In January 2013, ''The New York Times'' Public Editor Margaret M. Sullivan announced that for the first time in many decades, the paper generated more revenue through subscriptions than through advertising.
In December 2017, the number of free articles per month was reduced from 10 to 5, the first change to the metered paywall since April 2012. An executive of the New York Times Company stated that the decision was motivated by "an all-time high" in the demand for journalism. A digital subscription to ''The New York Times'' cost $16 a month in 2017. , ''The New York Times'' had a total of 3.5 million paid subscriptions in both print and digital versions, and about 130 million monthly readers, more than double its audience two years previously. In February 2018, the New York Times Company reported increased revenue from the digital-only subscriptions, adding 157,000 new subscribers to a total of 2.6 million digital-only subscribers. Digital advertising also saw growth during this period. At the same time, advertising for the print version of the journal fell.
Mobile presence
Apps
In 2008, ''The New York Times'' was made available as an Application software, app for the iPhone and iPod Touch; as well as publishing an iPad app in 2010. The app allowed users to download articles to their mobile device enabling them to read the paper even when they were unable to receive a signal. , ''The New York Times'' iPad app is ad-supported and available for free without a paid subscription, but translated into a Subscription business model, subscription-based model in 2011.
In 2010, ''The New York Times'' editors collaborated with students and faculty from New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, Studio 20 Journalism Masters program to launch and produce "The Local East Village", a hyperlocal blog designed to offer news "by, for and about the residents of the East Village". That same year, reCAPTCHA helped to digitize old editions of ''The New York Times''.
In 2010, the newspaper also launched an app for Android (operating system), Android smartphones, followed later by an app for Windows Phones.
Moreover, the ''Times'' was the first newspaper to offer a video game as part of its editorial content, ''Food Import Folly'' by Persuasive Games.
The ''Times Reader''
The ''Times Reader'' is a digital version of ''The New York Times'', 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, using 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.
Arthur Ochs "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. (born September 22, 1951) is an American journalist.
Sulzberger was the chairman of The New York Times Company from 1997 to 2020, and the publisher of ''The New York Times'' from 1992 to 2018.
Early life and ...
, Bill Gates, and Tom Bodkin.
In 2009, the ''Times Reader'' 2.0 was rewritten in Adobe AIR. In December 2013, the newspaper announced that the ''Times Reader'' app would be discontinued as of January 6, 2014, urging readers of the app to instead begin using the subscription-only ''Today's Paper'' app.
Podcasts
''The New York Times'' began producing podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...
s in 2006. Among the early podcasts were ''Inside The Times'' and ''Inside The New York Times Book Review''. Several of the ''Times''' podcasts were cancelled in 2012.
The ''Times'' returned to launching new podcasts in 2016, including ''Modern Love'' with WBUR-FM, WBUR. On January 30, 2017, ''The New York Times'' launched a news podcast, '' The Daily''. In October 2018, NYT debuted ''The Argument'' with opinion columnists Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and David Leonhardt. It is a weekly discussion about a single issue explained from the left, center, and right of the political spectrum.
Non-English versions
Chinese-language
In June 2012, ''The New York Times'' introduced its first official foreign-language variant, cn.nytimes.com, a Chinese-language news site viewable in both Traditional Chinese characters, traditional and simplified Chinese characters. The project was led by Craig S. Smith on the business side and Philip P. Pan on the editorial side, with content created by staff based in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong, though the server was placed outside of China to avoid censorship issues.
The site's initial success was interrupted in October that year following the publication of an investigative article by David Barboza about the finances of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's family. In retaliation for the article, the Chinese government blocked access to both ''nytimes.com'' and ''cn.nytimes''.com inside the China, People's Republic of China (PRC).
Despite Chinese government interference, the Chinese-language operations continued to develop, briefly adding a second site, cn.nytstyle.com, iOS and Android (operating system), Android apps, and newsletters, some of which are accessible inside the PRC. The China operations also produce print publications in Chinese. Traffic to ''cn.nytimes.com'', meanwhile, has risen due to the widespread use of Virtual private network, VPN technology in the PRC and to a growing Chinese audience outside mainland China. ''The New York Times'' articles are also available to users in China via the use of mirror websites, apps, domestic newspapers, and social media. The Chinese platforms now represent one of ''The New York Times'' top five digital markets globally. The editor-in-chief of the Chinese platforms is Ching-Ching Ni.
''The New York Times en Español'' (Spanish-language)
Between February 2016 and September 2019, ''The New York Times'' launched a standalone Spanish language, Spanish-language edition, ''The New York Times en Español''. The Spanish-language version featured increased coverage of news and events in Latin America and Spain. The expansion into Spanish language news content allowed the newspaper to expand its audience into the Spanish speaking world and increase its revenue. The Spanish-language version was seen as a way to compete with the established El País newspaper of Spain, which bills itself the "global newspaper in Spanish." Its Spanish version has a team of journalists in Mexico City as well as correspondents in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Miami, and Madrid, Spain. It was discontinued in September 2019, citing lack of financial success as the reason.
In March 2013, ''The New York Times'' and National Film Board of Canada announced a partnership titled ''A Short History of the Highrise'', which will create four short documentaries for the Internet about life in high rise buildings as part of the NFB's ''Highrise (documentary), Highrise'' project, utilizing images from the newspaper's photo archives for the first three films, and user-submitted images for the final film. The third project in the ''Short History of the Highrise'' series won a Peabody Award in 2013.
TimesMachine
The TimesMachine is a World Wide Web, Web-based archive of scanned issues of ''The New York Times'' from 1851 through 2002.
Unlike ''The New York Times'' online archive, the TimesMachine presents scanned images of the actual newspaper. All non-advertising content can be displayed on a per-story basis in a separate PDF display page and saved for future reference. The archive is available to ''The New York Times'' subscribers, whether via home delivery or digital access.
Interruptions
Because of holidays, no editions were printed on November 23, 1851; January 2, 1852; July 4, 1852; January 2, 1853; and January 1, 1854.
Because of Strike action, strikes, the regular edition of ''The New York Times'' was not printed during the following periods:
* September 19, 1923, to September 26, 1923. An unauthorized local union strike prevented the publication of several New York papers, among them ''The New York Times''. During this period "The Combined New York Morning Newspapers," were published with summaries of the news.
* December 12, 1962, to March 31, 1963. Only a western edition was printed because of the 1962–63 New York City newspaper strike.
* September 17, 1965, to October 10, 1965. An international edition was printed, and a weekend edition replaced the Saturday and Sunday papers.
* August 10, 1978, to November 5, 1978. The multi-union 1978 New York City newspaper strike shut down the three major New York City newspapers. No editions of ''The New York Times'' were printed. Two months into the strike, a parody of ''The New York Times'' called ''Not The New York Times'' was distributed in the city, with contributors such as Carl Bernstein, Christopher Cerf (musician and television producer), Christopher Cerf, Tony Hendra and George Plimpton.
The newspaper's website was hacked on August 29, 2013, by the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacking group that supports the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The SEA managed to penetrate the paper's domain name registrar, Melbourne IT, and alter domain name system, DNS records for ''The New York Times'', putting some of its websites out of service for hours.
Controversies
Ukraine
Walter Duranty, who served as its Moscow bureau chief from 1922 through 1936, has been criticized for a series of stories in 1931 on the Soviet Union and won a Pulitzer Prize for his work at that time. Criticism rose for his denial of Soviet famine of 1932–1933, widespread famine, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor, in the early 1930s in which he summarized Soviet propaganda, and the ''Times'' published, as fact: "Conditions are bad, but there is no famine".[Conquest, R. Reflections on a Ravaged Century. W.W. Norton & Company. New York. 2000. pp 123,156]
In 2003, after the Pulitzer Board began a renewed inquiry, the ''Times'' hired Mark von Hagen, professor of Russian history at Columbia University, to review Duranty's work. Von Hagen found Duranty's reports to be unbalanced and uncritical, and that they far too often gave voice to Stalinism, Stalinist propaganda. In comments to the press he stated, "For the sake of The New York Times' honor, they should take the prize away." ''The Ukrainian Weekly'' covered the efforts to rescind Duranty's prize. The ''Times'' has since made a public statement and the Pulitzer committee has declined to rescind the award twice, stating that "Mr. Duranty's 1931 work, measured by today's standards for foreign reporting, falls seriously short. In that regard, the Board's view is similar to that of ''The New York Times'' itself."
World War II
Jerold Auerbach, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Program, Fulbright Lecturer, wrote in ''Print to Fit, The New York Times, Zionism and Israel, 1896–2016'' that it was of utmost importance to Adolph Ochs
Adolph Simon Ochs (March 12, 1858 – April 8, 1935) was an American newspaper publisher and former owner of ''The New York Times'' and ''The Chattanooga Times'' (now the ''Chattanooga Times Free Press'').
Early life and career
Ochs was born t ...
, the first Jewish owner of the paper, that in spite of the persecution of Jews in Germany, ''The Times'', through its reporting, should never be classified as a "Jewish newspaper".
After Ochs' death in 1935, his son-in-law Arthur Hays Sulzberger became the publisher of ''The New York Times'' and maintained the understanding that no reporting should reflect on ''The Times'' as a Jewish newspaper. Sulzburger shared Ochs' concerns about the way Jews were perceived in American society. His apprehensions about judgement were manifested positively by his strong fidelity to the United States. At the same time, within the pages of ''The New York Times,'' Sulzburger refused to bring attention to Jews, including the refusal to identify Jews as major victims of Nazi genocide. Instead, many reports of Nazi-ordered slaughter identified Jewish victims as "persons." ''The Times'' even opposed the rescue of Jewish refugees.
On November 14, 2001, in ''The New York Times'' 150th-anniversary issue, in an article entitled "Turning Away From the Holocaust," former executive editor Max Frankel wrote:
And then there was failure: none greater than the staggering, staining failure of ''The New York Times'' to depict Hitler's methodical extermination of the Jews of Europe as a horror beyond all other horrors in World War II – a Nazi war within the war crying out for illumination.
According to Frankel, harsh judges of ''The New York Times'' "have blamed 'self-hating Jews' and 'anti-Zionists' among the paper's owners and staff." Frankel responded to this criticism by describing the fragile sensibilities of the Jewish owners of ''The New York Times'':
Then, too, papers owned by Jewish families, like ''The Times'', were plainly afraid to have a society that was still widely anti-Semitic misread their passionate opposition to Hitler as a merely parochial cause. Even some leading Jewish groups hedged their appeals for rescue lest they be accused of wanting to divert wartime energies.
At ''The Times'', the reluctance to highlight the systematic slaughter of Jews was undoubtedly influenced by the views of the publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger
Arthur Hays Sulzberger (September 12, 1891December 11, 1968) was the publisher of ''The New York Times'' from 1935 to 1961. During that time, daily circulation rose from 465,000 to 713,000 and Sunday circulation from 745,000 to 1.4 million; the st ...
. He believed strongly and publicly that Judaism was a religion, not a race or nationality – that Jews should be separate only in the way they worshiped. He thought they needed no state or political and social institutions of their own. He went to great lengths to avoid having ''The Times'' branded a ''Jewish newspaper.'' He resented other publications for emphasizing the Jewishness of people in the news.
In the same article, Frankel quotes Laurel Leff, associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University, who in 2000 had described how the newspaper downplayed Nazi Germany's targeting of Jews for Holocaust, genocide.
November 1942 was a critical month for American Jews. After several months of delay, the U.S. State Department had confirmed already published information that Germany was engaged in the systematic extermination of European Jews. Newspaper reports put the death toll at one million and described the "most ruthless methods," including mass gassings at special camps.
Yet at the beginning of November 1942, Sulzberger lobbied U.S. government officials against the founding of a homeland for Jews to escape to. The Times was silent on the matter of an increase in U.S. immigration quotas to permit more Jews to enter, and "actively supported the British Government's restriction on legal immigration to Palestine even as the persecution of Jews intensified". Sulzberger described Jews as being of no more concern to Nazi Germany than Roman Catholic priests or Christian ministers, and that Jews certainly were not singled out for extermination.
Leff's 2005 book ''Buried by the Times'' documents the paper's tendency before, during, and after World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
to place deep inside its daily editions the news stories about the ongoing persecution and extermination of Jews, while obscuring in those stories the special impact of the Nazis' crimes on Jews in particular. Leff attributes this dearth in part to the complex personal and political views of Sulzberger, concerning Jewishness, antisemitism, and Zionism.
Accusations of liberal bias
In 2004, the newspaper's public editor Daniel Okrent said in an opinion piece that ''The New York Times'' did have a liberal bias in news coverage of certain social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. He stated that this bias reflected the paper's cosmopolitanism, which arose naturally from its roots as a hometown paper of New York City, writing that the coverage of the ''Times''s Arts & Leisure; Culture; and the Sunday ''Times Magazine'' trend to the left.If you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world.
''Times'' public editor Arthur Brisbane wrote in 2012:When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper's many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.
''The New York Times'' public editor (ombudsman) Elizabeth Spayd wrote in 2016 that "Conservatives and even many moderates, see in The Times a Red states and blue states, blue-state worldview" and accuse it of harboring a liberal bias. Spayd did not analyze the substance of the claim but did opine that the ''Times'' is "part of a fracturing media environment that reflects a fractured country. That in turn leads liberals and conservatives toward separate news sources." ''Times'' executive editor Dean Baquet stated that he does not believe coverage has a liberal bias:We have to be really careful that people feel like they can see themselves in ''The New York Times''. I want us to be perceived as fair and honest to the world, not just a segment of it. It's a really difficult goal. Do we pull it off all the time? No.
Jayson Blair plagiarism (2003)
In May 2003, ''The New York Times'' reporter Jayson Blair was forced to resign from the newspaper after he was caught plagiarism, plagiarizing and fabricating elements of his stories. Some critics contended that Blair's African Americans, race was a major factor in his hiring and in ''The New York Times'' initial reluctance to fire him.
Iraq War (2003–06)
The ''Times'' supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On May 26, 2004, more than a year after the war started, the newspaper asserted that some of its articles had not been as rigorous as they should have been, and were insufficiently qualified, frequently overly dependent upon information from Iraqi exiles desiring regime change.
The New York Times admitted "Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all." The paper said it was encouraged to report the claims by "United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq".
''The New York Times'' was involved in a significant controversy regarding the allegations surrounding Iraq and weapons of mass destruction in September 2002. A front-page story was authored by Judith Miller which claimed that the Iraqi government was in the process of developing nuclear weapons was published.[Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller (September 8, 2002)]
"U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts
, ''The New York Times'' Miller's story was cited by officials such as Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld as part of a campaign to commission the Iraq War.[Michael Massing (February 26, 2004)]
"Now They Tell Us: The American Press and Iraq"
, ''New York Review of Books'' One of Miller's prime sources was Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi expatriate who returned to Iraq after the U.S. invasion and held a number of governmental positions culminating in acting oil minister and deputy prime minister from May 2005 until May 2006. In 2005, negotiating a private severance package with Sulzberger, Miller retired after criticisms that her reporting of the lead-up to the Iraq War was factually inaccurate and overly favorable to the position of the George W. Bush administration, Bush administration, for which ''The New York Times'' later apologized.
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
A 2003 study in the ''Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics'' concluded that ''The New York Times'' reporting was more favorable to Israelis than to Palestinians. A 2002 study published in the journal ''Journalism (journal), Journalism'' examined Middle East coverage of the Second Intifada over a one-month period in ''The New York'' ''Times'', The Washington Post, ''The'' ''Washington Post'' and the ''Chicago Tribune''. The study authors said that the ''Times'' was "the most slanted in a pro-Israeli direction" with a bias "reflected...in its use of headlines, photographs, graphics, sourcing practices, and lead paragraphs."
For its coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, some (such as Ed Koch) have claimed that the paper is pro-Palestinian, while others (such as As'ad AbuKhalil) have claimed that it is pro-Israel. ''The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy'', by political science professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, alleges ''The New York Times'' sometimes criticizes Israeli policies but is not even-handed and is generally pro-Israel. In 2009, the Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized the newspaper for printing cartoons regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that were described as "hideously anti-Semitic".
Prime Minister of Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a proposal to write an article for the paper on grounds of lack of objectivity. A piece in which Thomas Friedman commented that praise given to Netanyahu during a speech at the U.S. Congress was "paid for by the Israel lobby" elicited an apology and clarification from its author.
The 1619 Project
The 1619 Project, a long-form journalism project re-evaluating Slavery in the United States, slavery and its legacy in the United States led by investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, has received criticism from some historians.
In December 2019, twelve historians wrote to ''The New York Times Magazine
''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine Supplement (publishing), supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted man ...
'', expressing concern over what they alleged were inaccuracies and falsehoods fundamental to Hannah-Jones' reporting. The magazine's editor-in-chief, Jake Silverstein, responded to the historians' letter in an editorial, in which he called into question the historical accuracy of some of the letter's claims. In an article in ''The Atlantic'', historian Sean Wilentz responded to Silverstein, writing, "No effort to educate the public in order to advance social justice can afford to dispense with a respect for basic facts" and disputed the accuracy of Silverstein's defense of the project.
In September 2020, the ''Times'' updated the opening text of the project website to remove the phrase "understanding 1619 as our true founding" without accompanying editorial notes. Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote that the differences showed that the newspaper was backing away from some of the initiative's more controversial claims. The ''Times'' defended its practices, with Hannah-Jones emphasizing how most of the project's content has remained unchanged.
Reputation
The ''Times'' has developed a national and international "reputation for thoroughness". Among journalists, the paper is held in high regard; a 1999 survey of newspaper editors conducted by the ''Columbia Journalism Review'' found that the ''Times'' was the "best" American paper, ahead of ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', ''The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', and ''Los Angeles Times''. The ''Times'' also was ranked in a 2011 "quality" ranking of U.S. newspapers by Daniel de Vise of ''The Washington Post''; the objective ranking took into account the number of recent Pulitzer Prizes won, circulation, and perceived Web site quality. A 2012 report in WNYC called the ''Times'' "the most respected newspaper in the world."
Nevertheless, like many other U.S. media sources, the ''Times'' has suffered from a decline in public perceptions of credibility in the U.S. in the early 21st century. A Pew Research Center survey in 2012 asked respondents about their views on credibility of various news organizations. Among respondents who gave a rating, 49% said that they believed "all or most" of the ''Times''s reporting, while 50% disagreed. A large percentage (19%) of respondents were unable to rate believability. The ''Times''s score was comparable to that of ''USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...
''. Media analyst Brooke Gladstone of WNYC's ''On the Media'', writing for ''The New York Times'', says that the decline in U.S. public trust of the mass media can be explained (1) by the rise of the polarized Internet-driven news; (2) by a decline in trust in U.S. institutions more generally; and (3) by the fact that "Americans say they want accuracy and impartiality, but the polls suggest that, actually, most of us are seeking affirmation."
Awards
''The New York Times'' has won 132 List of Pulitzer Prizes awarded to The New York Times, Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. The prize is awarded for excellence in journalism in a range of categories.
It has also, , won three Peabody Awards and jointly received two. Peabody Awards are given for accomplishments in television, radio, and online media.
See also
* List of New York City newspapers and magazines
* List of The New York Times employees, List of ''The New York Times'' employees
* The New York Times Best Seller list, ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list
* The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge
* ''New York Times Index''
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
*
*
*
*
External links
*
*
Curated collection of most pre-1923 issues
at Online Books Page
* (archives)
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:New York Times, The
The New York Times,
1851 establishments in New York (state)
Newspapers established in 1851
Daily newspapers published in New York City
New York City local newspapers, in print
Podcasting companies
Tor onion services
Gerald Loeb Award winners for Deadline and Beat Reporting
National newspapers published in the United States
Peabody Award winners
Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism winners
Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting winners
Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting winners
Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers