The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. Although it remains both the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States as well as being third largest overall, behind The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, the weekday circulation of the paper has fallen precipitously in recent years to fewer than one million copies daily for the first time since the 1980s. Nicknamed "The Gray Lady" and long regarded within the industry as a national "newspaper of record", the Times is owned by The New York Times Company, which also publishes 18 other regional newspapers including the International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe. The company's chairman is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., whose family has controlled the paper since 1896.

The paper's motto, printed in the upper left-hand corner of the front page, is "All the News That's Fit to Print." It is organized into sections: News, Opinions, Business, Arts, Science, Sports, Style, and Features. The Times stayed with the eight-column format for several years after most papers switched to six columns, and it was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography. The Times has won 104 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization. Its web site was the most popular American online newspaper Web site as of December 2008, receiving more than 18 million unique visitors in that month.

History


The New York Times was founded on September 18, 1851, by journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond, who was then a Whig and who would later be the second chairman of the Republican National Committee, and former banker George Jones as the New-York Daily Times. Sold at an original price of one cent per copy, the inaugural edition attempted to address the various speculations on its purpose and positions that preceded its release: "We shall be Conservative, in all cases where we think Conservatism essential to the public good;—and we shall be Radical in everything which may seem to us to require radical treatment and radical reform. We do not believe that everything in Society is either exactly right or exactly wrong;—what is good we desire to preserve and improve;—what is evil, to exterminate, or reform."

The paper changed its name to The New York Times in 1857. The newspaper was originally published every day except Sunday, but on April 21, 1861, due to the demand for daily coverage of the Civil War, The Times, along with other major dailies, started publishing Sunday issues. One of the earliest public controversies in which the paper was involved was the Mortara Affair, an affair that was the object of 20 editorials in The Times alone.

The paper's influence grew during 1870–71, when it published a series of exposés of Boss Tweed that led to the end of the Tweed Ring's domination of New York's City Hall. In the 1880s, The Times transitioned from supporting Republican candidates to becoming politically independent; in 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential election. While this move hurt The Times' readership, the paper regained most of its lost ground within a few years.

The Times was acquired by Adolph Ochs, publisher of the Chattanooga Times, in 1896. The following year, he coined the paper's slogan, "All The News That's Fit To Print"; this was a jab at competing papers such as the New York World and the New York Journal American which were known for lurid yellow journalism. Under his guidance, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, and reputation. In 1904, The Times received the first on-the-spot wireless transmission from a naval battle, a report of the destruction of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Port Arthur in the Yellow Sea from the press-boat Haimun during the Russo-Japanese war. In 1910, the first air delivery of The Times to Philadelphia began. The Times' first trans-Atlantic delivery to London occurred in 1919. In 1920, a "4 A.M. Airplane Edition" was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening. In the 1940s, the paper extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the fashion section in 1946. The Times began an international edition in 1946. The international edition stopped publishing in 1967, when The Times joined the owners of the New York Herald Tribune and the Washington Post to publish the International Herald Tribune in Paris. The paper bought a classical radio station (WQXR) in 1946. In addition to owning WQXR, the newspaper also formerly owned its AM sister, WQEW (1560 AM). The classical music format was simulcast on both frequencies until the early 1990s, when the big-band and standards music format of WNEW-AM (now WBBR) moved from 1130 AM to 1560. The AM station changed its call letters from WQXR to WQEW. By the beginning of the 21st century, The Times was leasing WQEW to ABC Radio for its Radio Disney format, which continues on 1560 AM. Disney became the owner of WQEW in 2007. On July 14, 2009 it was announced that WQXR was to be sold to WNYC, who on October 8, 2009 moved the station to 105.9 FM and began to operate the station as a non-commercial.

The New York Times is third in national circulation, after USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper is owned by The New York Times Company, in which descendants of Adolph Ochs, principally the Sulzberger family, maintain a dominant role. In March 2009, the paper reported a circulation of 1,039,031 copies on weekdays and 1,451,233 copies on Sundays. According to a 2009 The New York Times article circulation has dropped 7.3 percent to about 928,000; this is the first time since the 1980s that it has fallen under one million. In the New York City metropolitan area, the paper costs $2 Monday through Saturday and $5 on Sunday. The Times has won 101 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper.

In 2009, The Times 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 edition on Fridays and Sundays. The Times 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.

In addition to its New York City headquarters, The Times has 16 news bureaus in New York State, 11 national news bureaus and 26 foreign news bureaus. The New York Times reduced its page width to 12 in from 13.5 in on August 6, 2007, adopting the width that has become the U.S. newspaper industry standard.

Because of its steadily declining sales in recent decades, The Times has been going through a downsizing for several years, offering buyouts to workers and cutting expenses, in common with a general trend among print newsmedia.

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 it moved to 41 Park Row, making it the first newspaper in New York City housed in a building built specifically for its use. The paper moved its headquarters to 1475 Broadway in 1904, in an area called Long Acre Square, which was renamed to Times Square. The top of the building is the site of the New Year's Eve tradition of lowering a lighted ball, which was started by the paper. The building is also notable for its electronic news ticker, where headlines crawled around the outside of the building. It is still in use, but is not operated by The Times. After nine years in Times Square, an Annex was built at 229 West 43rd Street. After several expansions, it became the company's headquarters in 1913, and the building on Broadway was sold in 1961. Until June 2007, The Times, from which Times Square gets its name, was published at offices at West 43rd Street. It stopped printing papers there on June 15, 1997.

The newspaper remained at that location until June 2007, when it moved three blocks south to 620 Eighth Avenue between West 40th and 41st Streets, in Manhattan. The new headquarters for the newspaper, The New York Times Building, is a skyscraper designed by Renzo Piano.

Times v. Sullivan
The paper's involvement in a 1964 libel case helped bring one of the key United States Supreme Court decisions supporting freedom of the press, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. In it, the United States Supreme Court established the "actual malice" standard for press reports about public officials or public figures to be considered defamatory or libelous. The malice standard requires the plaintiff in a defamation or libel case prove the publisher of the statement knew the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. Because of the high burden of proof on the plaintiff, and difficulty in proving what is inside a person's head, such cases by public figures rarely succeed.

The Pentagon Papers
In 1971, the Pentagon Papers, a secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1971, were given ("leaked") to Neil Sheehan of The New York Times by former State Department official Daniel Ellsberg, with his friend Anthony Russo assisting in copying them. The Times began publishing excerpts as a series of articles on June 13. Controversy and lawsuits followed. The papers revealed, among other things, that the government had deliberately expanded its role in the war by conducting air strikes over Laos, raids along the coast of North Vietnam, and offensive actions taken by U.S. Marines well before the public was told about the actions, and while President Lyndon B. Johnson had been promising not to expand the war. The document increased the credibility gap for the U.S. government, and hurt efforts by the Nixon administration to fight the on-going war.

When The Times began publishing its series, President Richard Nixon became incensed. His words to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger included "people have gotta be put to the torch for this sort of thing..." and "let's get the son-of-a-bitch in jail." After failing to get The Times to stop publishing, Attorney General John Mitchell and President Nixon obtained a federal court injunction that The Times cease publication of excerpts. The newspaper appealed and the case began working through the court system. On June 18, 1971, the Washington Post began publishing its own series. Ben Bagdikian, a Post editor, had obtained portions of the papers from Ellsberg. That day the Post received a call from the Assistant Attorney General, William Rehnquist, asking them to stop publishing. When the Post refused, the U.S. Justice Department sought another injunction. The U.S. District court judge refused, and the government appealed. On June 26, 1971 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take both cases, merging them into New York Times Co. v. United States 403 US 713. On June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court held in a 6–3 decision that the injunctions were unconstitutional prior restraints and that the government had not met the burden of proof required. The justices wrote nine separate opinions, disagreeing on significant substantive issues. While it was generally seen as a victory for those who claim the First Amendment enshrines an absolute right to free speech, many felt it a lukewarm victory, offering little protection for future publishers when claims of national security were at stake.

Discrimination in employment
Discriminatory practices restricting women in editorial positions were part of the history, correlating with effects on the journalism published at the time.

The newspaper's first general woman reporter was Jane Grant, who described her experience afterwards. She wrote, "In the beginning I was charged not to reveal the fact that a female had been hired". Other reporters nicknamed her Fluff and much hazing went on, although some male reporters were helpful. Because of her gender, promotions were out of the question, according to the then managing editor. She was there for fifteen years, interrupted by World War I.

In 1935, Anne McCormick wrote to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, "'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 did. "Even those who witnessed her in action were unable to explain how she got the interviews she did." Said Clifton Daniel, "["[A]fter World War II",] I'm sure [chancellor of West Germany Konrad] Adenauer called her up and invited her to lunch. She never had to grovel for an appointment." Covering world leaders' speeches after World War II at the National Press Club was limited to men, by a Club rule. When women were eventually allowed in to hear the speeches, they still were not allowed to ask the speakers questions, although 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 Robertson's article on the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, Ill., 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 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."

Ownership
The Ochs-Sulzberger family, one of the United States' newspaper dynasties, has owned The Times since 1896. After the publisher went public in the 1960s, the family continued to exert control through its ownership of the vast majority of Class B voting shares. Class A shareholders are permitted restrictive voting rights while Class B shareholders are allowed open voting rights. Dual-class structures caught on in the mid-20th century as families such as the Grahams of the Washington Post Company sought to gain access to public capital without losing control. Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, had a similar structure and was controlled by the Bancroft family; the company was later bought by the News Corporation in 2007.

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 for almost two decades, wanted to hide the ownership influence. 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.

Sections
This newspaper is organized in three sections, including the magazine.
 * 1) News: Includes International, National, Washington, Business, Technology, Science, Health, Sports, The Metro Section, Education, Weather, and Obituaries.
 * 2) Opinion: Includes Editorials, Op-Eds and Letters to the Editor.
 * 3) Features: Includes Arts, Movies, Theatre, Travel, NYC Guide, Dining & Wine, Home & Garden, Fashion & Style, Crossword, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, and Week in Review

Some sections, such as Metro, are only found in the editions of the paper distributed in the 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 Times does not have its own staff editorial cartoonist, nor does it feature a comics page or Sunday comics section. In September 2008, The Times announced that it would be combining certain sections effective October 6, 2008, in editions printed in the New York metropolitan area. The changes folded the Metro Section into the main International / National news section and combined Sports and Business (except Saturday through Monday, when Sports is still printed as a standalone section). This change also included having the name of the Metro section be called New York outside of the Tri-State Area. The presses used by The Times allow four sections to be printed simultaneously; as the paper had included more than four sections all days except Saturday, the sections had to be printed separately in an early press run and collated together. The changes will allow The Times to print in four sections Monday through Wednesday, in addition to Saturday. The Times' announcement stated that the number of news pages and employee positions will remain unchanged, with the paper realizing cost savings by cutting overtime expenses. According to Russ Stanton, editor of the Los Angeles Times, a competitor, the newsroom of The New York Times is twice the size of the Los Angeles Times, which currently has a newsroom of 600.

Style
When referring to people, The Times generally uses honorifics, rather than unadorned last names (except in the sports pages, Book Review and Magazine). The newspaper's headlines for major stories tend to come with subheadings giving further details, although it is moving away from this style.[Reference needed.] It stayed with an eight-column format until September 1976, years after other papers had switched to six, and it was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography, with the first color photograph on the front page appearing on October 16, 1997. In the absence of a major headline, the day's most important story generally appears in the top-right hand column, on the main page. The typefaces used for the headlines are custom variations of Cheltenham. The running text is set at 8.7 point Imperial.

Joining a roster of other major American newspapers in recent years, including USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, The New York Times announced on July 18, 2006, that it would be narrowing the size of its paper by one and a half inches. In an era of dwindling circulation and significant advertising revenue losses for most print versions of American newspapers, the move, which was also announced would result in a 5 percent reduction in news coverage, would have a target savings of $12 million a year for the paper. The change from the traditional 54-inches broadsheet style to a more compact 48-inch web width was addressed by both Executive Editor Bill Keller and The New York Times President Scott Heekin-Canedy in memos to the staff. Keller defended the "more reader-friendly" move indicating that in cutting out the "flabby or redundant prose in longer pieces" the reduction would make for a better paper. Similarly, Keller confronted the challenges of covering news with "less room" by proposing more "rigorous editing" and promised an ongoing commitment to "hard-hitting, ground-breaking journalism". The official change went into effect on August 6, 2007.

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 was the entire width of the page. The newspaper promised it would place first-page advertisements on only the lower half of the page.

Web presence
The Times has had a strong presence on the Web since 1996, and has been ranked one of the top Web sites. Accessing some articles requires registration, though this can be bypassed in some cases through Times RSS feeds. The website had 555 million pageviews in March 2005. The domain nytimes.com attracted at least 146 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study. The Times Web site ranks 59th by number of unique visitors, with over 20 million unique visitors in March 2009 making it the most visited newspaper site with more than twice the number of unique visitors as the next most popular site. Also, as of May 2009, nytimes.com produced 22 of the 50 most popular newspaper blogs.

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 work around this, bloggers often reposted TimesSelect material, and at least one site once compiled links of reprinted material. On September 17, 2007, The Times announced that it would stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight the following day, reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site. In addition to opening almost the entire site to all readers, The Times news archives from 1987 to the present are available at no charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. Access to the Premium Crosswords section continues to require either home delivery or a subscription for $6.95 per month or $39.95 per year. 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."

The Times is also the first newspaper to offer a video game as part of its editorial content, Food Import Folly by Persuasive Games.

reCAPTCHA is currently helping to digitize old editions of The New York Times.

Mobile presence
The Times Reader is a digital version of The Times. It was created via a collaboration between the newspaper and Microsoft. Times Reader takes the principles of print journalism and applies them to the technique of online reporting. Times Reader uses a series of technologies developed by Microsoft and their Windows Presentation Foundation team. It was announced in Seattle in April 2006 by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., Bill Gates, and Tom Bodkin. In 2009 the Times Reader 2.0 was rewritten in Adobe Air.

In 2008, The Times created an app for the iPhone and iPod touch which allowed users to download articles to their mobile device enabling them to read the paper even when they were unable to receive a signal.

In Moscow
Communication with its Russian readers is a special project of The New York Times launched at February 2008, guided by Clifford J. Levy. Some Times articles covering the broad spectrum of political and social topics in Russia are being translated into Russian and offered for attention of Russia's bloggers in The Times community blog. After that, selected responses of Russian bloggers are being translated into English and published at The New York Times site among comments from English readers.

Pricing
The paper's prices are, except Sundays, $2.00 for the Metro and National editions and, on Sundays, $5.00 for the Metro edition and $6.00 or $7.00 for the national edition.

Missed print dates
Due to strikes, the regular edition of The New York Times was not printed during the following periods:
 * December 9, 1962 to March 31, 1963. Only a western edition was printed.
 * 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. A multi-union strike shut down the three major New York City newspapers. No editions of The Times were printed. Two months into the strike, a parody of The Times called Not The New York Times was given out in New York, with contributors such as Carl Bernstein, Christopher Cerf, Tony Hendra and George Plimpton.

No editions were printed on January 2 of 1852–1853 and of 1862–1867. No editions were printed on July 5 of 1861–1865.

Political persuasion overall
The Times has been variously described as having a liberal bias or described as being a liberal newspaper, or of having a conservative or center-right bias on certain issues.

According to a 2007 survey by Rasmussen Reports of public perceptions of major media outlets, 40% believe The Times has a liberal slant and 11% believe it has a conservative slant. In December 2004 a University of California, Los Angeles study gave The Times a score of 73.7 on a 100 point scale, with 0 being most conservative and 100 being most liberal. The validity of the study has been questioned by various organizations, including the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America. In mid-2004, the newspaper's then public editor (ombudsman), Daniel Okrent, wrote a piece in which he concluded that The Times did have a liberal bias in coverage of certain social issues such as gay marriage. He claimed that this bias reflected the paper's cosmopolitanism, which arose naturally from its roots as a hometown paper of New York City. Okrent did not comment at length on the issue of bias in coverage of "hard news", such as fiscal policy, foreign policy, or civil liberties, but did state that the paper's coverage of the Iraq war was insufficiently critical of the George W. Bush administration.

Iraq War
Reporter Judith Miller retired after criticisms that her reporting of the lead-up to the Iraq War was factually inaccurate and overtly favorable to the Bush administration's position, for which The Times was forced to apologize. One of Miller's prime sources was Ahmed Chalabi, who after the U.S. occupation became the interim oil minister of Iraq and is now head of the Iraqi services committee. However, reporter Michael R. Gordon, who shared byline credit with Miller on some of the early Iraq stories, continues to report on military affairs for The Times.

Israel and the Palestinians
For its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some have claimed that the paper is pro-Palestinian; and others have claimed that it is pro-Israel. A controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by political science professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, alleges that The New York Times sometimes criticizes Israeli policies but is not even-handed and is generally pro-Israel. On the other hand, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has criticized The Times for printing anti-Semitic cartoons regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt concluded in his January 10, 2009, column, "Though the most vociferous supporters of Israel and the Palestinians do not agree, I think The Times, largely barred from the battlefield and reporting amid the chaos of war, has tried its best to do a fair, balanced and complete job — and has largely succeeded."

Central America in 1980s
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a progressive media criticism organization, has accused The New York Times of following the "Reagan administration's PR strategy" in the 1980s by "emphasizing repressive measures in Nicaragua [by the leftist Sandinista government] and downplaying or ignoring more serious human rights abuses elsewhere in Central America" (namely in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, countries with governments backed by the Reagan administration).

World War II
On November 14, 2001, in the New York Times's 150th anniversary issue, former executive editor Max Frankel wrote that before and during World War II, the Times had maintained a consistent policy to minimize reports on the Holocaust in their news pages. Laurel Leff, associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University, concluded that the newspaper had downplayed the Third Reich targeting of Jews for genocide. Her 2005 book "Buried by the Times" documents the Times' tendency before, during and after World War II 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. Professor Leff attributes this dearth in part to the complex personal and political views of the newspaper's publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, concerning jewishness, anti-semitism, and zionism.

During the war, Times journalist William L. Laurence was "on the payroll of the War Department". Another serious charge is the accusation that The Times, through its coverage of the Soviet Union by correspondent Walter Duranty, intentionally downplayed the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s.

Plagiarism and fabrication
In May 2003, Times reporter Jayson Blair was forced to resign from the newspaper after he was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of his stories. Some critics contended that Blair's race was a major factor in The Times' initial reluctance to fire him.

Fashion news set by advertising size
In the mid to late 1950s, "fashion writer[s] . . . . were required to come up every month with articles whose total column-inches reflected the relative advertising strength of every ["department" or "specialty"] store ["assigned" to a writer]. . . . The monitor of all this was . . . the advertising director [of the Times] . . . ." However, within this requirement, story ideas may have been the reporters' and editors' own.

Misrepresentation
In February 2009, the newspaper was accused of using "chintzy" ad-hominem allegations in an article on British Tamil music artist M.I.A. concerning her activism against the Sinhala-Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka. M.I.A. joined others in criticizing the paper in January 2010 after a glowing travel piece about Sri Lanka was printed in it. In 2010, the New York Times magazine was later forced to publish a correction on a published interview with M.I.A. after an interview conducted by current W editor and then New York Times magazine profiler Lynn Hirschberg contained various fabrications, misquotes and recontextualizations. In response to the hatchet job piece, M.I.A. broadcasted Hirschberg's number and secret audio recordings from the interview via her Twitter and website following publication. Ignorance and inconsistency within the New York Times was blamed as a factor, with critics pointing out the irony of news items on the conflict printed by the newspaper itself.