One clip is th
e first column of New York Times public editor (No. 3) Clark Hoyt who headed the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau before leaving when KR was bought by McClatchy.A decision by editors not to play charges of a terrorism plot at Kennedy Airport on Page 1 last Sunday puzzled Hoyt and some readers — and angered others.
It was the play story in the Washington Post. The Times printed the story on the Metro front with a teaser on page one. Times editors thought at the time that since the plot posed no real threat to JFK it should not go out front.
Read Hoyt’s very good first column.
The other clip carries the one word headline ‘Copy!’ In a reminiscent story of the sounds and sounds of years gone by as the Times after 94 years moves from the old newspaper factory at 229 West 43rd Street to the new Piano skyscraper at 6520 Eighth Avenue.
The story by David W. Dunlap recalls the role of Carr Van Anda who was born in Georgetown, Ohio, in 1864.
After studying astronomy and physics at Ohio University, Van Anda became a reporter for the Cleveland Herald. In 1886 he was appointed night editor of the Baltimore Sun and two years later did the same job for the New York Sun.In February 1904 Adolph Ochs the owner of the New York Times, appointed Van Anda as managing editor. At the instruction of Van Anda in 1907 the newspaper set up a biographical file, or morgue, to index newspaper and magazine clippings. It reached its millionth name card in the 1940s. During the first World War Van Anda started the publishing of full text of important speeches and documents made it the newspaper of record.
One of Van Anda's many success stories was the way he reported the sinking of the Titanic. At 1:20 a.m. on 15th April, 1912, the New York Times newsroom received information about the Titantic SOS via the Marconi wireless station in Newfoundland. Van Anda contacted his correspondents in Halifax and Montreal who were able to find out that the ship's wireless had fallen silent 30 minutes after the first call for help. By consulting the New York Times detailed news library Van Anda discovered that other ships had recently reported close scrapes with icebergs in this area. The next morning the New York Times reported on its front page that the ship had sunk while other papers in America were handling the story in incomplete and inconclusive manner.
The newspaper continued to prosper under Van Anda's management and by 1921 circulation had reached 330,000 during the week and 500,000 on Sunday. At the same time advertising had increased tenfold in 25 years. Carr Van Anda, who retired from the New York Times in 1932, died in 1945.
See Dunlap’s story
See a video with Dunlap’s story
See a nice timeline of the New York Times.
The video with Dunlap’s story also mentions Charlotte Curtis who was both the first woman on the masthead of The New York Times and one of the last women to always be the only woman in the room in the world of big-time journalism.
Curtis was born to a prominent, socially active Ohio family, and after Vassar she returned to become a reporter and editor at the Columbus Citizen. She dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent, but as a female reporter her work was largely relegated to the women's pages.
Charlotte Curtis Hunt, who died in 1986, is credited with changing the nature and content of newspaper women's pages to reflect the more newsy, issue-oriented stories that characterize them today.
In 2000, a $2 million gift from the Charlotte Curtis Hunt Living Trust to the Ohio State University Foundation established the William E. Hunt, M.D. and Charlotte M. Curtis Neuroscience Endowment Fund within the university's College of Medicine and Public Health. The gift was made in memory of the late Dr. Hunt, former head of neurosurgery at Ohio State, and his late wife, Charlotte Curtis Hunt, a former editor at the New York Times.
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