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If this were in my local paper, I’d help pay to have a picture of the cat posted. After all, there are young people who don’t know what Barbra Streisand looks like. -via Criggo
You laughed at the correction we posted yesterday, but now we have the full story. The author of the New York Times article, Amy Harmon, explained how it all came about.
The Times’ rule is, we correct anything that is wrong, no matter how small or seemingly silly. And I don’t know any of my colleagues who would want to do differently. I hate to get any detail wrong, and when I do, I often have a moment of fantasizing about just letting it slip. But as I sat there that morning, kicking myself for a relatively small mistake that marred a story I had poured my heart into, it seemed so much worse to let it stand. Not correcting it would have undermined the credibility of the other 5,011 words of the story – at least for “My Little Pony” fans. And I think we have seen now that they are not an obsessive subculture to be taken lightly.
Another part of the Times’ corrections policy, which arose after the awfulness of Jayson Blair, is that each correction is entered in a tracking system that includes who was responsible, and an explanation of how the error came to be.
She tells how the error came to the newspaper’s attention, how important it turned out to be in the context of the article, and her explanation for it. Link -via Metafilter
A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times ran a great article entitled Navigating Love and Autism. A day later, it was forced to add a correction, apparently by the many fans of My Little Pony. Link -via Buzzfeed
Image: Police News - via Telegraph
This is very neat: the British Library, in collaboration with brightsolid online publishing, has digitized 4 million newspaper pages published in the UK since 1800, comprising of some 65 million articles. And they're not done yet: more than 650 million articles and 40 million pages are expected to be digitized when the project is completed in 2020.
You can search by keywords and types of articles, including family notices, obituaries and advertisements, at the British Newspaper Archive. It will, however cost you a money to gain access (you can get 48 hour access for £6.95 or an annual subscription for £79.95).
The scanning process is quite interesting:
Over the past year our team has been scanning up to 8,000 digital images per day from original bound newspaper pages. One benefit of being able to access the original bound volumes of newspapers and periodicals is that, unlike many other newspaper digitisation projects, we have been able to scan some of the rarest and most fragile newspapers in the collection.
We have even scanned single pages more than two feet wide! These publications are now not available for public view or access through the Library's reading rooms; however, they will be available to view on this website.
Our scanning uses five Zeutschel A0 scanners that create very high quality digital images of 400dpi in 24bit colour.
Some of the newspapers already scanned have resulted in single page image files being as large as 400MB! This is due to the very large physical size of the original newspaper pages, particularly around the turn of the 19th century.
Check it out: The British Newspaper Archive - via Telegraph
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.
The media’s power to “create” news has become a hot topic in recent years. But it’s nothing new. This true story, from a book called The Fabulous Rogues, by Alexander Klein, is an example of what’s been going on for at least a century. It was sent to us by BRI reader Jim Morton.
Most journalistic hoaxes, no matter how ingenious, create only temporary excitement. But in 1899 four reporters in Denver, Colorado, concocted a fake story that, within a relatively short time, made news history -violent history at that. Here’s how it happened.
THE DENVER FOUR
One Saturday night the four reporters -from Denver’s four newspaper, the Times, Post, Republican, and Rocky Mountain News- met by chance in the railroad station where they had each come hoping to spot an arriving celebrity around whom they could write a feature. Disgustedly, they confessed to one another that they hadn’t picked up a newsworthy item all evening.
“I hate to go back to the city desk without something,” one of the reporters, Jack Toumay, said.
“Me, too,” agreed Al Stevens. “I don’t know what you guys are going to do, but I’m going to fake. It won’t hurt anybody, so what the devil.”
They other three fell in with the idea and they all walked up Seventeenth Street to the Oxford Hotel, where, over beers, they began to cast about for four possible fabrications. John Lewis, who was known as “King” because of his tall, dignified bearing, interrupted one of the preliminary gambits for a point of strategy. Why dream up four lukewarm fakes, he asked. Why not concoct a sizzler which they would all use, and make it stick better by their solidarity.
more …
Journalism students at Florida Atlantic University recently constructed their final summer issue of the student newspaper. It was a very special and different issue, as they avoided all their digital equipment and did it the old-fashioned way: with typewriters, paste-up editing, and cameras with film- which they had to develop themselves.
Managing editor Mariam Aldhahi was stymied after typing her first line. “What do I do now?” she asked. “There’s no RETURN key.”
I pointed to the lever that would propel the carriage back to the left, while the gears inside would simultaneously ratchet the paper to the next line.
She tapped it lightly.
“No, this is a manual typewriter,” I told her. “You actually have to expend some calories.”
I slammed the lever to the right, and the carriage flew back to the left margin, stopping with a thud. A look of understanding, laced with horror, crossed her face.
“It’s going to be like this the entire time, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” I said. “It gets worse.”
The typing turned out to be easier than editing and designing each page. But the issue was finished! Link to part one. Link to part two. -via Laughing Squid
Well,
this ain't exactly the newspaper kiosk most people have in mind!
Australian skin-care company Aesop opened their first American store in New York's Grand Central Terminal. They decided that newspaper would work better than regular ol' cabinet displays:
Designed by Aesop director Dennis Paphitis and Brooklyn architect Jeremy Barbour of Tacklebox, the place takes the great American newspaper and uses it the way every American does: by piling stuff on it.
The Aesop kiosk is made of roughly 1,800 torn copies of the New York Times. Laid flat, piled up one on top of the other, and held together by a wooden frame, they create little display stands for Aesop’s assorted body scrubs and facial hydrating creams.
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Phillip Mendonça-Vieira accidentally found himself in the possession of 12,000 screenshots of the New York Times homepage from September 2010 to July 2011, which he arranged into a video for your perusal. There are some stories that were so big you can follow them even at this breakneck speed. At his site, Mendonça-Vieira writes about the ephemeral quality of pages like this, which are rarely if ever archived. Link -via Laughing Squid
In the days before the internet (actually 1912-1963), Bostonians could get news headlines at a glance by dropping by the storefront office of The Boston Globe. Handwritten signs and blackboards had the top stories, breaking news, and even sports stats in big print as fast as they were available. And of course, if you wanted to read more, you could buy a paper. Shown here is the big map of Europe installed for the D-Day invasion in 1944. See more pictures of the hand-lettered “homepage” at The Boston Globe. Link -via Metafilter
Sir John Frederick William Herschel
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.
No, not the one about the Hollywood studio and all that -the other one.
A WALK ON THE MOON
On August 25, 1835, the first of a series of front-page article was published in the Sun, a two-year-old newspaper in New York City. The subject was Sir John Frederick William Herschel, one of the most respected scientists of his day, especially in the field of astronomy. He’d already identified and named seven moons of Saturn and four of Uranus, and had received numerous awards for his work, including a British knighthood. The information for the article came from the Edinburgh Journal of Science and a Dr. Andrew Grant, who had recently accompanied Dr. Herschel to South Africa, where they were mapping the skies of the Southern Hemisphere. To do the job properly, Herschel had built a massive telescope -the lens was 24 feet in diameter- that operated “on an entirely new principle.” It was all very scientific and complicated.
The first article didn’t reveal much, but over the next six days readers received some amazing news. In the course of his investigations with the new device, Hershel had aimed his new telescope at the moon. The scope was so powerful that looking through it was almost like standing on the lunar surface, enabling Herschel to make an astonishing discovery: The moon was teeming with life. And not just plants -there were animals running all over the place.
EXPERTS AGREE
Extraterrestrial life was a hot topics in the early 1800s. Telescopes were getting larger, and astronomers were discovering more and more stars, moons, planets, comets, nebulae, etc. Along with these discoveries some claims -sometimes from respected astronomers- that it was only a matter of time before life was discovered on other planets. One especially popular book at the time was Christian Philosopher, or the Connexion of Science and Philosophy with Religion, by Scottish scientist and minister Thomas Dick, first published in 1823. In it, Dock estimated (somehow) that there were roughly 21 trillion inhabitants in our solar system -4 million of whom lived on the moon!
MOON BATS
Over the six days, the Sun’s readers learned even more new information about the moon. A few examples: The lunar surface is covered in forests, lakes, rivers, and seas, inhabited by spherical creatures that rolled across the beautiful beaches, blue unicorns that wander the mountains, and two-legged beavers that live in huts and use fire. But there was one even more outlandish claim: There are intelligent humanoids on the moon -about four feet tall, largely covered in hair, with faces that are “a slight improvement upon that of a large orangutan.” And they have wings. They spend their time flying around, eating fruit, bathing, and talking with each other. Herschel gave them the scientific name Vespertilio-homo, or “man-bat,” and said they were actually civilized.
more …
The Queensland, Australia newspaper The Morning Bulletin covered stories from the recent floods. One livestock farmer was particularly devastated.
MORE than 30,000 pigs have been floating down the Dawson River since last weekend, with a piggery at Baralaba paralysed by flooding which has killed most of its bred live-stock.
Baralaba Butchers’ Sid Everingham owns and runs the piggery near Baralaba.
Mr Everingham said: “We’ve lost probably about 30,000 pigs in the floods, we tried to get as many weaners and suckers out by boat, but we could only save about 70 weaners, and the suckers didn’t survive long, because they needed that mother’s milk, and all the sows have been washed away.
But later the story was clarified.
What Baralaba piggery-owner Sid Everingham actually said was “30 sows and pigs”, not “30,000 pigs”
Science Service was a nonprofit news organization that decided to “jazz up” their information releases by adding humorous pictures in the 1920s. Some of these “cartoonographs” are preserved in the Smithsonian Institution. Many of the early cartoonographs were drawn by Elizabeth Sabin Goodwin; see more examples at The Bigger Picture. Link -via Nag on the Lake
This certainly brings new meaning to the saying "the writing on the wall." Lori Weitzner created Newsworthy, a new wallpaper made from recycled newsprint: Link
Who says that newspaper is out of style? Yuliya Kyrpo created this stunning dress, complete with a flowing peacock train, from 1,000 paper cranes folded from old newspapers: Link – via Inhabitat
Now this is recycling! Artist Nick Georgiou from Queens, New York, folds newspapers and magazines into works of art, and then drops them off in random locations throughout the city:
“Books and newspapers are becoming artifacts of the 21st century,” he explains. “My work is not only about the decline of the printed word in today’s society but its rebirth as art.”
Sometimes those in traditional media (meaning newspapers) get upset that some on the internet use their material. Apparently that door swings both ways, and if you don’t have a proofreader, you could end up with egg on your face! Link -via Blame It On The Voices
The people over at /Film have come across a hilarious gag that we’ve all seen without realizing it. There’s a specific newspaper that’s been used and re-used in film and television, and even commercials, as the go-to prop for any scene involving the paper.
I don’t know the story behind this prop newspaper, but I assume it was created as a royalty free prop for television shows. Somewhere along the line, the prop became a reoccurring gag between propmasters.
SFist blogger Brock Keeling posted a picture of three cramped San Francisco Muni passengers pass the time with a newspaper, Kindle and iPad.
One SFist reader wondered about the symbolism of the empty seat.
Without missing a beat, Keeling cleverly replied: "The empty seat is reserved for web 4.0."
Photo by Brian Brooks.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
The headline reads:
Dog injures nose
The story is short. The comments are priceless.
Sounds harrowing. Keep us posted.
It’s outrageous that something like this is allowed to happen in this country. I want this to be addressed in the next prime ministeral debates. Let’s see Nick Clegg talk himself out of this one.
Shocked and disgusted. There’s nothing but bad news now days. What sort of world are we leaving for our children?
This is brave and edgy reporting. It’s a pity that the Pulitzer Prize is limited to the USA.
But how does he smell??
The comments at reddit are another level of win.
…I only live a few hours from Ringwood. Should I get down there and see if I can find out more?
Good luck! The roads are going to be packed as soon as this story gets out.
Probably best to stay indoors until it all blows over. And keep your windows closed.
This little item became the most viewed story ever at the Salisbury Journal’s website. Link -via reddit
(image credit: Flickr user desiretofire : music is the shape of silence)
Dutch designer Mieke Meijer compresses and bonds old newspapers so that the print is still legible, but the resulting product has the grain and feel of original wood:
Every day, piles of newspapers are discarded and recycled into new paper. Mieke Meijer has come up with a solution to use this surplus of paper into a renewed material. When a NewspaperWood log is cut, the layers of paper appear like lines of a wood grain or the rings of a tree and therefore resembles the asethetic of real wood. The material can be cut, milled and sanded and generally treated like any other type of wood.
Link via Make | Designer’s Website | Photo: Atelier 29
Ted Ingram of Dorset, UK, may be the oldest paperboy in the world at the age of 90. He’s been on the job for 68 years and is estimated to have delivered half a million copies of the newspaper over the length of his career:
He said he has only twice cancelled his deliveries – both times when snow prevented the papers getting to him.[...]
The 90-year-old moved to the village in 1938 and worked as a tractor driver on a farm.
But he decide to boost his income by taking up a paper round aged 22.
Missed connections, looking for marriage, let’s meet, in addition to rooms for rent, cars for sale, and job openings. Sounds like Craiglist, but these kinds of ads have been around in newspapers as long as there have been news papers. The New York Times has some examples from the 19th century.
If the young lady wearing the pink dress, spotted fur cape and muff, had light hair, light complexion and blue eyes, who was in company with a lady dressed in black, that I passed about 5 o’clock on Friday evening in South Seventh Street, between First and Second, Williamsburg, L.I., will address a line to Waldo, Williamsburg Post Office, she will make the acquaintance of a fine young man.
Jan. 19, 1862
I only wish we knew how successful these ads were. Link -via Nag on the Lake
(image credit: Flickr user “T”eresa)
Maybe writers aren’t aware how their copy inspires a “Duh!” reaction. Or maybe they are trying to entertain us to make up for a boring story. Either way, these headlines and newspaper clips are funny enough to ensure a long life on the internet. Link
Creative Cloud has a collection of newspaper scans with the biggest headlines of the past 100 years. Here you have a chance to see the news the way people saw it on the days (or the day after, in most cases) many world-changing events happened, from the sinking of the Titanic to the election of the latest president of the United States. Link -via the Presurfer
The announcement in the Times of London told the world that Kate Pong had given birth to quintuplets named Beyonce, Tyra, Bobbi, Barrack and Earl. The small item prompted Robert Littlejohn of The Daily Mail to speculate on the mother’s marital status. But it turns out that Kate Pong is a chocolate Labrador! Kate’s owner, Fiona Wallace of Newport, Shropshire said a friend had placed the birth announcement but didn’t bother to mention that Kate is a dog.
“We have a lot of friends in the business all over the country and lots of people read about her on the website.
They keep logging on and it’s just snowballed from there.
“So many people were asking about her and the pups that we decided to put it in the Times so everyone around the country would know.”
Link to story. Link to website.
This and many more clippings of newspaper article titles so bad they’re good, funny typos and more at this gem of a blog called Criggo. Be prepared to lose hours: Link – via Miss Cellania
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Jon Lund of New Media Trends wrote a fascinating post about the Danish Free Newspaper War, which happened when newspapers tried to "out-free" a free Icelandic paper that entered their market. The whole thing ended up costing the collective newspaper industry in Denmark more than $150 million …
On October 6 2006 “Nyhedsavisen”, a new Danish daily newspaper hit the streets. A quality newspaper staffed with 100 journalists and ambitions of being the largest Danish newspaper with a daily circulation on 500.000 and 1 million readers (total Danish population equals some 5,5 million). The newspaper should feature an editorial mix prioritizing both prize-winning critical journalism and stories close to the everyday life of ordinary Danes.
The prizing of Nyhedsavisen was simple: it was free. And, as something entirely new: it was (intended) to be delivered to the homes of all Danes – without any costs. Not only the newspaper itself was free, delivery was free as well. It was in effect “double-free”.
Read the rest of the story here: Link – via The Long Tail
To protest the hyperinflation that has rendered the Zimbabwe currency worthless and to raise awareness of the dire economic situation there, the Zimbabwean Newspaper created an ad campaign featuring huge posters, wall murals, flyers, and even billboards all made out of trillions of Zimbabwean dollars. Check out the photos from the newspaper’s Flickr photostream.
The Mugabe regime has destroyed Zimbabwe. It has presided over the brutal oppression of the opposition, a cholera crises, massive food shortages and the total collapse of their economy. Furthermore anyone brave enough to report this has been bullied, beaten and driven into exile. One such group is ‘the Zimbabwean Newspaper’. However, not content with having hounded these journalists out, the regime has slapped an import ‘luxury’ duty of over 55% on them which makes the paper unaffordable for the average Zimbabwean. In order to subsidize the paper they need to sell it in England and South Africa, to raise the foreign currency.
A unique campaign was devised to promote the paper to raise awareness and increase readership. One of the most eloquent symbols of Zimbabwe’s collapse is the Z$100 trillion dollar note, a symptom of their world record inflation. This note cannot buy anything, not even a loaf of bread and certainly not any advertising, but it can become the advertising, it can be a powerful reminder about Zimbabwe’s plight and the need to hold someone accountable.
Link – via thehouseofmarketing
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by frankiejones.
Ever since the advents of the Internet, online publishing, and now blogs, people have tooted (is that the right verb? anyhoo … ) the clarion calls of the immiment demise of print media.
And now, the economic crisis have finally pushed one large newspaper to go 100% "web only":
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will roll off the presses for the last time Tuesday, ending a 146-year run.
The Hearst Corp. announced Monday that it would stop publishing the newspaper, Seattle’s oldest business, and cease delivery to more than 117,600 weekday readers.
The company, however, said it will maintain seattlepi.com, making it the nation’s largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.
"Tonight we’ll be putting the paper to bed for the last time," Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby told a silent newsroom Monday morning. "But the bloodline will live on."
In a news release, Hearst CEO Frank Bennack Jr. said, "Our goal now is to turn seattlepi.com into the leading news and information portal in the region."
Link (Photo: Joshua Trujillo/P-I)
