The New York Times

File:The New York Times.jpg The September 11, 2002 front page of The New York Times.
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	The New York Times Company
Publisher	Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.
Editor	Bill Keller
Founded	1851
Headquarters	New York City, U.S.
ISSN	0362-4331
Website	www.nytimes.com

The New York Times is a newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. and distributed internationally. It is owned by The New York Times Company, which publishes 47 other newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune and the Boston Globe. Nicknamed the "Gray Lady" for its staid appearance and style, it is regarded as a newspaper of record in the United States. The name is abbreviated the Times, not to be confused with the The Times, which is published in the United Kingdom.

History

File:Dday newyorktimes.jpg

The front page on June 6, 1944 announces the beginning of the Battle of Normandy

The New York Times was founded on September 18, 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones (as the New-York Daily Times). Raymond later became a founding director of the Associated Press in 1856.

The paper was originally intended to publish every morning except on Sundays; however, during the Civil War the Times started publishing Sunday issues along with other major dailies. Between 1870-1871, a series of Times exposes brought down Boss Tweed and ended the Tweed Ring's domination of city hall.[1]

In the 1876 presidential election, while other newspapers declared Samuel Tilden the victor over Rutherford B. Hayes, the Times, under the headline A Doubtful Election, asserted the outcome remained uncertain. After months, an electoral commission and Congress finally decided the election in Hayes's favor.[2]

Adolph Ochs, publisher of The Chattanooga Times in Chattanooga, Tennessee, acquired The New York Times in 1896, and under his guidance the newspaper achieved an international scope, circulation, and reputation. In 1897 he coined the paper's slogan, "All The News That's Fit To Print," widely interpreted as a jab at competing papers in New York City (the New York World and the New York Journal American) that were known for yellow journalism.

The paper gave its name to Times Square in 1904 after it moved to new headquarters on 42nd Street in an area formerly known as Longacre Square. It was here that the New Year's Eve tradition of lowering a lighted ball from the Times building was started by the paper in 1907. After only nine years in Times Square, the paper relocated in 1913 to 229 43rd Street, its current headquarters. The original Times Square building, now known as One Times Square, was sold in 1961. A new headquarters for the newspaper, a skyscraper designed by Renzo Piano, is currently under construction at 41st Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan.

In 1904, the Times received the first on-the-spot wireless transmission from a naval battle, a report of the destruction of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Port Arthur in the Yellow Sea during the Russo-Japanese war.

In 1919 it made its first trans-Atlantic delivery to London. In 1910, the first air delivery of the Times to Philadelphia began. In 1920, a "4 A.M. Airplane Edition" was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening.

November 6, 1928, on Times Tower, the Motograph News Bulletin, better known as the zipper, starts flashing its 14,800 bulbs with election results: Herbert Hoover defeats Al Smith. Begining May 18, 1942, the zipper went dark in compliance with wartime dimout rules.

The crossword began to appear in 1942 as a feature, and the paper bought the classical radio station WQXR in the same year. The fashion section started in 1946. The Times also started an international edition in 1946, but stopped publishing it in 1967 and joined with the owners of the New York Herald Tribune and The Washington Post to publish the International Herald Tribune in Paris. (In 2003, the Times became sole publisher) The Op-Ed section started appearing in 1970. More recently, in 1996, The New York Times went online, giving access to readers all over the world on the Web at www.nytimes.com.

In 1964, the paper was the defendant in a libel case known as New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, in which the Supreme Court established the actual malice legal test for libel.

Pulitzer Prizes

The Times has won 94 Pulitzer Prizes, far more than any other newspaper:

1918 The New York Times, for the most disinterested and meritorious public service rendered by an American newspaper -- complete and accurate coverage of the war.

1923 Alva Johnston, for distinguished reporting of science news.

1926 Edward M. Kingsbury, for the most distinguished editorial of the year, on the Hundred Neediest Cases.

1930 Russell Owen, for graphic news dispatches from the Byrd Antarctic Expedition.

1932 Walter Duranty, for reporting of the news from Russia. (Other writers in The Times and elsewhere have discredited this coverage.)

1934 Frederick T. Birchall, for unbiased reporting from Germany.

1935 Arthur Krock, for distinguished, impartial and analytical Washington coverage.

1936 Lauren D. Lyman, for distinguished reporting: a world beat on the departure of the Lindberghs for England.

1937 Anne O'Hare McCormick, for distinguished foreign correspondence: dispatches and special articles from Europe.

William L. Laurence, for distinguished reporting of the Tercentenary Celebration at Harvard, shared with four other reporters.

1938 Arthur Krock, for distinguished Washington correspondence.

1940 Otto D. Tolischus, for articles from Berlin explaining the economic and ideological background of war-engaged Germany.

1941 The New York Times, special citation for the public education value of its foreign news reports.

1942 Louis Stark, for distinguished reporting of labor stories.

1943 Hanson W. Baldwin, for a series of articles reporting a tour of the Pacific battle areas.

1944 The New York Times, for the most disinterested and meritorious service rendered by an American newspaper -- a survey of the teaching of American history.

1945 James B. (Scotty) Reston, for news and interpretive articles on the Dumbarton Oaks Security Conference.

1946 Arnaldo Cortesi, for distinguished correspondence from Buenos Aires. William L. Laurence, for his eyewitness account of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and articles on the atomic bomb.

1947 Brooks Atkinson, for a distinguished series of articles on Russia.

1949 C.P. Trussell, for consistent excellence in covering the national scene from Washington.

1950 Meyer Berger, for a distinguished example of local reporting -- an article on the killing of 13 people by a berserk gunman.

1951 Arthur Krock, a special commendation for his exclusive interview with President Truman: the outstanding instance of national reporting in 1950.

Cyrus L. Sulzberger, special citation for his interview with Archbishop Stepinac of Yugoslavia.

1952 Anthony H. Leviero, for distinguished national reporting.

1953 The New York Times, special citation for its Review of the Week section which "has brought enlightenment and intelligent commentary to its readers."

1955 Harrison E. Salisbury, for a series based on his five years in Russia.

Arthur Krock, a special citation for distinguished correspondence from Washington.

1956 Arthur Daley, for his sports column, "Sports of The Times."

1957 James B. (Scotty) Reston, for distinguished reporting from Washington.

1958 The New York Times, for distinguished coverage of foreign news.

1960 A.M. Rosenthal, for perceptive and authoritative reporting from Poland.

1963 Anthony Lewis, for distinguished reporting of the United States Supreme Court.

1964 David Halberstam, for distinguished reporting from South Vietnam.

1968 Anthony Lukas, for a distinguished example of local reporting -- an article on a murdered 18-year-old girl and her two different lives.

1970 Ada Louise Huxtable, for distinguished architecture criticism.

1971 Harold C. Schonberg, music critic, for distinguished criticism.

1972 The New York Times, for a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper -- publication of the Pentagon Papers.

1973 Max Frankel, for his coverage of President Nixon's visit to China, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.

1974 Hedrick Smith, for a distinguished example of reporting on foreign affairs, coverage of the Soviet Union.

1976 Sydney H. Schanberg, for his coverage of the fall of Cambodia, a distinguished example of reporting on foreign affairs.

Walter W. (Red) Smith, for his "Sports of The Times" column, an example of distinguished criticism.

1978 Henry Kamm, chief Asian diplomatic correspondent, for articles calling attention to the plight of Indochinese refugees.

Walter Kerr, Sunday drama critic, for an outstanding example of distinguished criticism.

William Safire, Op-Ed Page columnist, for his columns on the Bert Lance affair, an example of distinguished commentary.

1979 Russell Baker, for his "Observer" column, an example of distinguished commentary.

1981 Dave Anderson, for his "Sports of The Times" column, an example of distinguished commentary.

John M. Crewdson, for his coverage of illegal aliens and immigration, a distinguished example of reporting on national affairs.

1982 John Darnton, for his coverage of the crisis in Poland, a distinguished example of international reporting.

Jack Rosenthal, deputy editorial page editor, for a distinguished example of editorial page writing.

1983 Thomas L. Friedman, for his coverage of the war in Lebanon, a distinguished example of international reporting.

Nan Robertson, for her article in The New York Times Magazine on her experience with toxic shock syndrome, a distinguished example of feature writing.

1984 Paul Goldberger, for distinguished architecture criticism.

John Noble Wilford, for national reporting on a wide variety of scientific topics.

1986 Donal Henahan, music critic, for distinguished criticism. The New York Times, for explanatory journalism: a series of articles on the Strategic Defense Initiative, the "Star Wars" program.

1987 The New York Times, for national reporting on causes of the Challenger shuttle disaster.

Alex S. Jones, for distinguished specialized reporting on the dissension that dissolved a Louisville newspaper dynasty.

1988 Thomas L. Friedman, for coverage of Israel, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.

1989 Bill Keller, for coverage of the Soviet Union, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.

1990 Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, for coverage of political turmoil in China, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.

1991 Natalie Angier, for coverage of molecular biology and animal behavior, a distinguished example of beat reporting.

Serge Schmemann, for coverage of the reunification of Germany, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.

1992 Anna Quindlen, for "Public & Private," a compelling column covering a wide range of personal and political topics.

Howell Raines, for "Grady's Gift," an account in The New York Times Magazine of his childhood friendship with his family's housekeeper and the lasting lessons of their interracial relationship.

1993 John F. Burns, for courageous coverage of the strife and destruction in Bosnia, a distinguished example of international reporting.

1994 The New York Times, for local reporting of the World Trade Center bombing, pooling the efforts of the metropolitan staff as well as Times journalists covering locations as far-ranging as the Middle East and Washington.

Isabel Wilkerson, for distinguished feature writing.

Kevin Carter, for his photograph of a vulture perching near a little girl in the Sudan who had collapsed from hunger, a picture that became an icon of starvation.

1995 Margo Jefferson, for her book reviews and other pieces, examples of distinguished criticism.

1996 Rick Bragg, for distinguished feature writing.

Robert D. McFadden, for distinguished rewrite journalism, applied to a broad range of stories.

Robert B. Semple Jr., for distinguished editorial writing on environmental issues.

1997 John F. Burns, for distinguished international reporting on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

1998 Linda Greenhouse, for reporting on the Supreme Court's work and its significance with sophistication and a sense of history.

Michiko Kakutani, for reviewing 1997's many major literary works in essays that were fearless and authoritative.

The New York Times, for a series of articles on the effects of drug corruption in Mexico, a distinguished example of international reporting.

1999 Maureen Dowd, for the moral insight and wit she brought to bear in her columns on the combat between President Clinton andKenneth Starr.

The New York Times, notably Jeff Gerth, for a series of articles disclosing the corporate sale of American technology to China with the approval of the U.S. Government despite national security risks.

2002 The New York Times, for public service, for "A Nation Challenged," a daily special section covering the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan and America's campaign against terrorism. The section, which included biographical sketches of the victims, also appeared online.

The New York Times, for its informed and detailed reporting that profiled the global terrorism network and the threats it posed, a distinguished example of explanatory reporting.

The New York Times, for its photographs chronicling the pain and the perseverance of people enduring protracted conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a distinguished example of feature photography.

The New York Times, for its consistently outstanding photographic coverage of the terrorist attack on New York City and its aftermath, a distinguished example of breaking news photography.

Gretchen Morgenson, for her trenchant and incisive Wall Street coverage, a distinguished example of beat reporting.

Barry Bearak, for his deeply affecting and illuminating coverage of daily life in war-torn Afghanistan, a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs.

Thomas Friedman, for his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat.

2003 Clifford J. Levy, for investigative reporting, for his "Broken Homes" series that exposed the abuse of mentally ill adults in state-regulated homes.

2004 The New York Times, for public service, for its series written by David Barstow and Lowell Bergman that examined death and injury among American workers and exposed employers who break basic safety rules.

2005 Walt Bogdanich, for national reporting, for his investigative series about the corporate cover-up of responsibility for fatal accidents at railway crossings.

2006 Nicholas D. Kristof for commentary on bringing the genocide in Darfur to the world's attention.

Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley for international reporting for their examination of China's legal system.

James Risen and Eric Lichtblau for national reporting for their coverage of the United State government's secret eavesdropping program.

The Times today

The New York Times' main offices at 229 West 43rd Street in New York City.

The New York Times is one of the most prominent American daily newspapers, although it trails USA Today and the Wall Street Journal in circulation. It has traditionally printed full transcripts of major speeches and debates. The newspaper is currently owned by The New York Times Company, in which descendants of Ochs, principally the Sulzberger family, maintain a dominant role.

Since winning its first Pulitzer Prize , in 1918 for its World War I reporting, the Times has won 94 Pulitzer Prizes, including a record seven in 2002. In 1971 it broke the Pentagon Papers story, publishing leaked documents revealing that the U.S. government had been painting an unrealistically rosy picture of the progress of the Vietnam War. This led to New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), which declared the government's prior restraint of the classified documents was unconstitutional. More recently, in 2004 the Times won a Pulitzer award for a series written by David Barstow and Lowell Bergman on employers and workplace safety issues.

The Times has been going through a downsizing for several years, offering buyouts to workers and cutting expenses , in common with a general trend among print newsmedia. At the end of 2005 it had over 350 full time reporters and about 40 photographers, in addition to hundreds of free-lance contributors who work for the paper more occasionally. Net income dropped 69 percent for the thirteen weeks ending March 26, 2006. It is also becoming increasingly embroiled in controversies relating to its accuracy and perceived political leanings (see below).

The Times is based in New York City. It has 16 news bureaus in the New York region, 11 national news bureaus and 26 foreign news bureaus. In recent years, it has sought to strengthen its status as a national newspaper by increasing to twenty its number of printing locations, allowing early morning distribution in many additional markets.

In 2005, the paper reported a circulation of roughly 1,131,000 copies on weekdays and 1,681,000 copies on Sundays. In the New York City metropolitan area, the paper costs $1.00 Monday through Saturday and $3.50 on Sunday. New home delivery subscribers may receive a discount. [3]

The newspaper continues to own classical WQXR (96.3 FM) and WQEW (1560 AM). The classical format was simulcast on both frequencies until the early 1990s, when the big-band and standards 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 had begun leasing WQEW to ABC Radio for its Radio Disney format, which continues on 1560 AM to this day.

The Times had a separate Television guide from March 1988 to April 2006. It was the last major newspaper to not outsource its television guide's editorial content to a syndication service such as Tribune Media Services, though the latter company compiled the data for the guide's TV grids. Blurbs (short, haiku-like summaries) for the listings of theatrical and television movies were based on the opinions of Times critics but edited to a succinct form by the former film critic Howard Thompson, Lawrence Van Gelder and Anita Gates.

The New York Times is printed at the following sites:

Ann Arbor, Michigan; Austin, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Billerica, Massachusetts; Canton, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; College Point, New York; Concord, California; Dayton, Ohio (Sunday only); Denver, Colorado; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Gastonia, North Carolina; Edison, New Jersey; Lakeland, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Springfield, Virginia; Kent, Washington; Torrance, California and Toronto, Canada.

Major sections

The newspaper is organized in three sections:

1. News

Includes International, National, Washington, Business, Technology, Science, Health, Sports, New York Region, Education, Weather, and Obituaries.

2. Opinion

Includes Editorials, Op-Eds and Letters to the Editor.

3. Features

Includes Arts, Books, Movies, Theater, Travel, NYC Guide, Dining & Wine, Home & Garden, Fashion & Style, Crossword, The New York Times Magazine, and Week in Review

Style

When referring to people, it uses titles, rather than unadorned last names (except among the sports pages, in which last names stand alone). Its headlines tend to be verbose, and, for major stories, come with subheadings giving further details, although it is moving away from this style. It stayed with an 8-column format years after other papers had switched to 6, and it was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography, with the first color photograph on the front page appearing on October 16, 1997. In the absence of a major headline, the day's most important story generally appears in the top-righthand column.

The typefaces used for the headlines include Cheltenham. The text is set in Imperial.

Web presence

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The initial look of NYTimes.com in 1996

The Times has had a strong presence on the web since 1995, and has been ranked one of the top web sites. It is accessible via www.nytimes.com and www.nyt.com. It has a general policy of keeping articles freely available for a week and charges subscription for older articles. Accessing some articles requires registration, though this restriction can be bypassed by using a link generator or in some cases through Times RSS feeds.[4] The website had 555 million pageviews in March 2005.

For the month of March 2006, NYTimes.com had a strong traffic, with 11.6 million unique visitors and continues to rank as the number one newspaper site. NYT Company consolidation (which includes About.com) is the 12th most-visited parent company, with 37.7 million unique visitors.

In September 2005, the paper decided to begin subscription based service for daily columns in a program known as TimesSelect. This was unusual in that it included previously free editorial columns, and so it consequently led to attempts to work around it such as Never Pay Retail and the posting of TimesSelect material by bloggers. One of the reasons for this new service was to move from a large dependency on ad revenue.

Times Select is free for print copy subscribers [5], online readers can access it for $7.95 per month, about the cost of two Sunday editions, or can get a year subscription for $49.95 per year [6].

Times columnists such as Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman have made their criticisms of TimesSelect clear, with Friedman going so far as to say "I hate it. It pains me enormously because it’s cut me off from a lot, a lot of people, especially because I have a lot of people who reading me overseas, like in India and whatnot, and so I hate it ... I feel totally cut off from my audience." in a video interview conducted at the 2006 Webby Awards. Most for-pay NYT editorials are available online shortly after their publication through blog searches. As of late January 2006 online reproduction of Select content is extremely difficult to find on commercial websites.

Famous mistakes

In 1920, a New York Times editorial ridiculed Robert Goddard and his claim that a rocket would work in space:

That Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.

In 1969, days before Apollo 11's landing on the moon, the newspaper published a tongue-in-cheek correction:

Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.

On November 15, 1992, the Times published a list of slang terms (known as "grunge speak") that were supposedly used in the Seattle grunge scene. This was later proven to be a hoax created by Megan Jasper, a sales representative for Sub Pop Records.

On several occasions the Times has erroneously published premature obituaries, including:

• William Baer (a New York University professor) in 1942, as a result of a hoax by his students
• Alan Abel in 1980, who had faked his own death as an elaborate hoax
• Katharine Sergava (ballet dancer) in 2003, based on an earlier incorrect obituary in The Daily Telegraph.

Jayson Thomas Blair (born 23 March 1976) is a former Times reporter disgraced for committing repeated journalistic fraud. It was discovered in 2003 that he had faked quotes and even entire interviews, plagiarized from other newspapers, and submitted false expense records to deceive the paper about his whereabouts.

Allegations of bias

The Times, like many major news organizations, has often been accused of giving too little or too much play to various events for reasons not related to objective journalism.

One of these allegations is that before and during World War II, the New York Times downplayed accusations that the Third Reich had targeted Jews for expulsion and genocide, at least in part because the publisher, who was Jewish, feared the taint of taking on any 'Jewish cause'.

Another serious charge is the accusation that the Times, through its coverage of the Soviet Union by correspondent Walter Duranty helped to cover up the Ukrainian genocide perpetrated by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.[7][8]

Corporate influence bias

In the book Manufacturing Consent, noted left-wing intellectuals Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky analyze a variety of major U.S. media outlets, with an emphasis on the Times, and conclude that a bias does exist. This bias, they claim, is neither liberal nor conservative in nature, but rather aligned towards the interests of corporate conglomerates, such as those who now own most of these media. Chomsky has explained that this bias functions in all sorts of ways:

"...by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns, by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within certain limits. They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict -- in order to serve the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society."

Chomsky also touches on the specific importance that this bias has in the New York Times:

"...history is what appears in The New York Times archives; the place where people will go to find out what happened is The New York Times. Therefore it's extremely important if history is going to be shaped in an appropriate way, that certain things appear, certain things not appear, certain questions be asked, other questions be ignored, and that issues be framed in a particular fashion."

Accusations of liberal bias

Some conservatives believe that The Times' has a liberal slant, particularly on social issues. A 2005 study by Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo of media coverage over the past ten years ranked the New York Times as the third most liberal of twenty major media outlets ranked by Americans for Democratic Action's guidelines for lawmakers' votes on selected issues of importance to liberals.

The 2005 roster of regular columnists ranges in political position from Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, and Bob Herbert on the left, to Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman on the center-left, to David Brooks and John Tierney on the right. These labels must be placed alongside the subjects that the columnists most frequently choose to write about. For example, Friedman writes a great deal about free trade and globalization -- and thus often comes across as more conservative -- while Kristof writes almost exclusively about human rights, and thus comes across as more liberal.

The editorial page of The Times last endorsed a Republican Party presidential candidate in 1956 when it backed Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nonetheless, the paper has endorsed Republicans in statewide or local races, such as current New York Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Daniel Okrent, The Times former Public Editor stated that his was a liberal newspaper in a July 25, 2004 article. Additionally in a post-Jayson Blair report to Bill Keller, a committee of Times employees noted:

Nothing we recommend should be seen as endorsing a retreat from tough-minded reporting of abuses of power by public or private institutions. In part because the Times’s editorial page is clearly liberal, the news pages do need to make more effort not to seem monolithic.

Distinctions between news, comment, ads

On November 25, 2002, the Times ran a front-page story with the headline, "CBS Staying Silent in Debate on Women Joining Augusta" — part of a string of stories focusing on the Augusta National Golf Club, the host of the Masters Tournament, effectively demanding a boycott. Critics complained that this was an editorial usurping news space. Mickey Kaus wrote that the executive editor, Howell Raines, was "on the verge of a breakthrough reconceptualization of 'news' here, in which 'news' comes to mean the failure of any powerful individual or institution to do what Howell Raines wants them to do."

At the time Raines said he intended to "flood the zone" with coverage of the Augusta controversy. Some commenters believed this was a concerted effort not to report the news, but to lobby the Augusta National club to change its policies. This effort failed.

The Times has also been criticized for allowing Exxon-Mobil Corporation to run a regular paid "advertorial" commentary piece on its editorial page, although the practice is common in other U.S. newspapers. Some studies have shown that the Times selection of op-ed pieces and letters to the editor seem to "bracket" their editorial position, making the editorials appear to be moderate — although again this practice is hardly unique to the Times.

Times self-examination of bias

In summer 2004, the Times' then public editor (ombudsman), Daniel Okrent, wrote a piece on the Times' alleged liberal bias. He concluded that the Times did have a liberal bias in coverage of certain social issues, gay marriage being the example he used. 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. However, he noted that the paper's coverage of the Iraq war was, among other things, insufficiently critical of the George W. Bush administration (see below). (In May 2005 Okrent was succeeded by Byron Calame.) Calame has not been very visible in moderating criticism of the New York Times alleged bias.

Recent controversies

In 2003, The Times admitted that Jayson Blair, one of its reporters, had committed repeated journalistic fraud over a span of several years. The general professionalism of the paper was questioned, though Blair immediately resigned following the incident. Questions of affirmative action in journalism were also raised, since Blair was black. The paper's top two editors – Howell Raines, the executive editor, and Gerald Boyd, managing editor – resigned their posts following the incident.

In April, 2004 The Times reversed its policy of not using the term Armenian Genocide. Despite publishing dozens of articles about the Armenian Genocide as it progressed, The Times for a period shied away from using the term in its articles as part of its editorial policy. The Turkish Government still denies genocide occurred. Incidentally, Times columnist and former reporter Nicholas D. Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has mentioned being of Armenian descent and has criticized the ongoing denial of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government, in his Times column.

On May 26, 2004, The Times published a piece entitled "From the Editors" indicating that the paper's of the lead up to the war in Iraq, "especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists...was not as rigorous as it should have been." [9]

In August 2005, The Times was accused of attempting to unseal the adoption records of United States Supreme Court nominee Justice John Roberts's children, an unprecedented investigation by a newspaper. Journalist Brit Hume, of Fox News reported that the Times has been asking lawyers that specialize in adoption cases for advice on how to get into the sealed court records. The report went on, "Sources familiar with the matter tell Fox News that at least one lawyer turned the Times down flat, saying that any effort to pry into adoption case records, which are always sealed, would be reprehensible." The Times replied: "Our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions, as they did about many other aspects of his background. They did so with great care, understanding the sensitivity of the issue. We did not order up an investigation of the adoptions. We have not pursued the issue after the initial inquiries, which detected nothing irregular about the adoptions. More specifically, our reporter called a number of lawyers who handle adoptions to learn about adoption issues in general and to inquire whether adoption papers are publicly available. He was told that the rule varies from case to case and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. At some point, he was informed that the Roberts adoption papers were sealed. He did not try to get them unsealed, nor did he try to obtain copies in any other way. He did not hire anyone to help him. Our editors have made it clear that they will not stand for any gratuitous reporting about the Roberts children. Many of our staff are adoptive parents-including our executive editor-and we are particularly sensitive to the subject."

In October 2005, Times reporter Judith Miller was released from prison after an 85-days, when she agreed to testify to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury after receiving a personal waiver, both on the phone and in writing, of her earlier confidential source agreement with Lewis "Scooter" Libby. No other reporter whose testimony had been sought in the case had received such a direct and particularized release. Miller’s courage and fortitude in going to jail to protect her sources were widely applauded by journalists and others throughout the world; they recognized that only by protecting confidential sources can the free flow of information to the public, especially from government critics and whistleblowers, truly exist. Her sacrifice also fueled an initiative on Capitol Hill to enact a Federal Shield law, comparable to the state shield laws which protect reporters in 49 of the 50 states. After her second appearance before the grand jury, Miller was released from her contempt of court finding. Miller resigned from the paper on 9 November 2005.

On December 16, 2005, a New York Times article revealed that the Bush administration had ordered the NSA to intercept certain telephone conversations between suspected terrorists in the U.S. and those in other countries without first obtaining court warrants for the surveillance, apparently in violation of FISA and without the knowledge or consent of the Congress. A federal judge recently held that the plan revealed by The Times was unconstitutional, and hearings have been held in this issue in Congress. The article noted that reporters and editors at the Times had known about this intelligence-gathering program for approximately a year, but after meeting with White House officials, who requested that the article not be published, the newspaper chose to delay publication to conduct additional reporting. The Justice Department has launched an investigation to determine the sources of the classified information regarding the program that the Times published. The men who reported the stories, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2006.

In an article in June 2006, the Times revealed a Treasury Department program, intended to detect terrorist financiers, that involved searches of international money transfer records stored in the SWIFT database in Belgium. The Administration again urged the Times to not publish the article, alleging national security concerns. Much of this information had already been made public, strangely by the Administration itself which now was criticizing the disclosures. The report was controversial with the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page criticizing it, notwithstanding that its own news pages had published virtually the same information.

In an earlier similar case, in late 2001 Times reporters (including Judith Miller) were leaked information about government actions against the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation, two Islamic Charities suspected of funding terrorist organizations. In the course of their reporting, The Times reporters sought comment from the charities; the government had already frozen the assets of other similar charities, and the fact that additional government action was about to be taken had been widely reported. A grand jury was convened in Illinois to consider an indictment against the leakers. The Times did not cooperate with the prosecutor’s request for the reporters to identify their confidential sources. When the government said it would subpoena the telephone companies for the phone records of the reporters to help identify their sources, The Times sought an injunction preventing the prosecutor from obtaining and reviewing the records. The Federal District Court in New York agreed with The Times on the basis of a First Amendment and common law reporters’ privilege, and barred the government from seeing the records. However, that decision was recently reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, allowing the government to obtain the records.

Management and employees

Publishers

• Adolph Ochs (1896-1935)
• Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1935-1961)
• Orvil Dryfoos (1961-1963)
• Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger (1963-1992)
• Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. (1992- )

Executive editors

• Turner Catledge (1964-1968)
• James Reston (1968-1969)
• position vacant (1969-1976)
• Abe Rosenthal (1977-1986)
• Max Frankel (1986-1994)
• Joseph Lelyveld (1994-2001)
• Howell Raines (2001-2003)
• Bill Keller (2003- )

Current columnists

[10]

Op-Ed Columnists

• David Brooks, Thursday, Sunday
• Maureen Dowd, Wednesday, Saturday
• Thomas L. Friedman, Wednesday, Friday
• Bob Herbert, Monday Thursday
• Nicholas D. Kristof, Tuesday, Sunday
• Paul Krugman, Monday Friday
• Frank Rich, Sunday
• John Tierney, Tuesday, Saturday
• William Safire (retired as an Op-Ed columnist as of late January 2005, but continues as Language columnist)

News Columnists

• Dave Anderson, Weekly
• Peter Applebome Wednesday, Sunday
• Harvey Araton, Weekly
• Dan Barry, Wednesday, Saturday
• Roger Cohen, Wednesday, Saturday
• Clyde Haberman, Tuesday, Friday
• Gretchen Morgenson, Sunday
• Joseph Nocera, Saturday
• Floyd Norris, Friday
• William C. Rhoden, Weekly
• Selena Roberts, Weekly
• George Vecsey, Weekly
• John Vinocur, Tuesday

See also

• CIA leak grand jury investigation
• New York Times Best Seller list
• Media of New York City
• Current History
• Bulldog edition
• Norimitsu Onishi
• John Bertram Oakes
• David E. Sanger
• Don Van Natta, Jr.

Further reading

• Berry; Nicholas O. Foreign Policy and the Press: An Analysis of the New York Times' Coverage of U.S. Foreign Policy (Greenwood. 1990)
• Davis; Elmer. History of the New York Times, 1851-1921 (1921)
• Hess, John. My Times: A Memoir of Dissent, Seven Stories Press (2003), cloth, ISBN 1-58322-604-4; trade paperback, Seven Stories Press (2003), ISBN 1-58322-622-2
• Jones, Alex S. and Susan E. Tifft. The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times. Back Bay Books (2000), ISBN 0-316-83631-1.
• Mnookin, Seth. Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media, Random House (2004), cloth, ISBN 1-4000-6244-6.
• Talese, Gay. The Kingdom and the Power, World Publishing Company, New York, Cleveland (1969), ISBN 0-8446-6284-4.

• The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, revised edition. Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly. New York: Times Books, 1999. ISBN 0-8129-6388-1. Self-indexed.

External links

• The New York Times on the Web
• WQXR, the Times' radio station
• Official history of the Times
• "The Times and Iraq," New York Times, May 26, 2004.
• Daniel Okrent, "Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?" New York Times, May 30, 2004.
• Daniel Okrent, "THE PUBLIC EDITOR; Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" New York Times, July 25, 2004
• Times Watch, weblog documenting alleged examples of liberal bias in the Times, run by the Media Research Center
• Fit and Unfit to Print: the Wall Street Journal replies to the Times on the subject of the press's obligations in wartime
• Plamegate timeline, AIPAC / Franklin Pentagon mole indictment, Niger yellowcake connections? at NewsFollowUp.com.
• Times/WaPo Watch, Criticism of the New York Times from a progressive perspective