The New York Times facts for kids
| All the News That's Fit to Print | |
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The New York Times print edition on January 13, 2024
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | The New York Times Company |
| Founder(s) | |
| Publisher | A. G. Sulzberger |
| Founded | September 18, 1851 |
| Headquarters | 620 Eighth Avenue Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Country | United States |
| Circulation | 10,360,000 news subscribers (as of May 2024) |
| Sister newspapers | International Herald Tribune (1967–2013) The New York Times International Edition (1943–1967; 2013–present) |
| ISSN | 0362-4331 (print) 1553-8095 (web) |
| OCLC number | 1645522 |
The New York Times (often called NYT) is a famous American daily newspaper. It is based in New York City. The Times shares news from the local area, across the country, and around the world. It also publishes opinion pieces, special reports, and reviews. It is one of the oldest newspapers in the United States and is known as a "newspaper of record." This means it keeps a detailed history of important events.
As of May 2024, over 9.9 million people read the Times online, and 640,000 people get the printed paper. This makes it the second-largest newspaper in the U.S. by print readers. The Times has won 137 Pulitzer Prizes, which are very important awards for journalism. This is more than any other publication.
The newspaper is owned by The New York Times Company. Since 1896, the Ochs-Sulzberger family has led the company. The current chairman and publisher is A. G. Sulzberger. The main office of the Times is in The New York Times Building in Manhattan.
The Times started in 1851 as the New-York Daily Times. It became well-known in the 1870s for reporting on a corrupt politician named William M. Tweed. Later, in 1896, Adolph Ochs took control of the company. In 1935, his son-in-law, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, became publisher and helped the paper grow, especially in covering European news. His son-in-law, Arthur Ochs, became publisher in 1963 and made big changes to keep up with the changing newspaper world.
In 1971, The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers. These were secret government documents about the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The government, led by President Richard Nixon, tried to stop them. But the Supreme Court ruled that the Times had the right to publish them because of the First Amendment. In the 1980s, the Times started using digital technology and launched its website, nytimes.com, in 1996. In recent years, the newspaper has focused more on its online presence as more people read news on the internet.
The Times also creates other things, like The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times International Edition, and The New York Times Book Review. They also make TV shows, podcasts like The Daily, and games through The New York Times Games.
History of The New York Times
Early Years (1851-1896)
The New York Times was started in 1851 by two journalists, Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones. The paper quickly became popular, especially among conservative readers. During the American Civil War, Times reporters traveled to the Southern states to gather news directly.
In 1869, George Jones took over the paper after Raymond passed away. Jones changed the name to The New-York Times. Under his leadership, the Times started publishing many articles that criticized a corrupt politician named William M. Tweed. Even though other New York newspapers were against it, the Times kept reporting. In 1871, The New-York Times even published Tweed's secret financial records. Tweed was later sent to prison. This strong reporting made the Times famous across the country. After Jones died in 1891, the paper faced money problems during a tough economic time called the Panic of 1893.
Growing and Changing (1896-1945)
In August 1896, Adolph Ochs, who owned another newspaper, bought The New-York Times. He made big changes. Ochs wanted the Times to be a newspaper for everyone, not just one group. He also removed the hyphen from the name, so it became The New York Times. In 1905, the Times moved into a new building called Times Tower, showing its growth.
The Times reported on major events like the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, being more careful with its news than other papers. The managing editor, Carr Van Anda, also focused on science news. The Times reported on Albert Einstein's new theory of general relativity and was involved in the discovery of King Tut's tomb.
In April 1935, Ochs died, and his son-in-law, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, became the publisher. During the Great Depression, Sulzberger had to make the Times smaller. But he also encouraged the use of photos sent by wire, which was a new technology.
The New York Times covered World War II in great detail, with large headlines and exclusive stories. Even with fewer staff because of the war, the Times had the biggest team of journalists. The paper's international edition became available to soldiers overseas. A journalist named William L. Laurence reported on the secret project to build the atomic bomb, called the Manhattan Project. He was the only reporter to witness this project.
Modern Era (1945-1998)
After World War II, The New York Times continued to grow. In the 1960s, the newspaper faced challenges, including a major strike by workers in 1962-1963. This strike meant many New Yorkers couldn't get their usual newspapers.
In 1963, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger became the publisher. He helped the Times adapt to new technologies and changes in the newspaper world. In 1971, The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, which were secret government documents. The U.S. government tried to stop the publication, but the Supreme Court ruled that the Times had the right to publish them. This was a very important decision for freedom of the press.
The Times also covered the Watergate scandal, which led to President Nixon's resignation. In the 1980s and 1990s, the newspaper started to embrace the Internet. In May 1994, The New York Times began putting some of its content on America Online. Even though some people at the Times were unsure about the internet, the success of other online news sources pushed the paper to create its own website. nytimes.com officially launched on January 19, 1996.
Digital Age (1998-Present)
After launching its website, The New York Times continued to grow online. The Times covered the September 11 attacks in great detail, with many articles in the next day's paper.
In the early 2000s, the Times faced some issues, including a scandal where a journalist was found to have made up parts of his stories. This led to changes in leadership. The newspaper also faced financial difficulties during the Great Recession. To help with this, the Times started charging for access to its online articles in March 2011. This "paywall" helped the paper earn more money from readers.
In 2016, after the presidential election, the Times saw a big increase in new readers. However, it also faced strong criticism from then-President Donald Trump. In 2018, A. G. Sulzberger, the son of the previous publisher, became the new publisher.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Times focused on providing lots of data and graphs about the virus. On May 23, 2020, the front page of the Times had no pictures, only a list of names to mark the nearly 100,000 people who had died from COVID-19 in the U.S. This was the first time the front page had no images since they were first introduced. Since 2020, The New York Times has continued to grow its online content, including games and TV series. In 2022, The New York Times Company bought The Athletic, a popular sports news website.
How The Times Works
Who Runs The Times?
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Since 1896, the Ochs-Sulzberger family has published The New York Times. Before them, Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones were in charge. Today, A. G. Sulzberger is the publisher. The executive editor, who is in charge of all the news content, is Joseph Kahn.
The New York Times is owned by The New York Times Company. This is a company whose shares can be bought and sold by the public. Besides the newspaper, The New York Times Company also owns other popular websites like Wirecutter (for product reviews), The Athletic (for sports news), and NYT Cooking and NYT Games. The Ochs-Sulzberger family still owns most of the company through special shares, which allows them to choose most of the people on the company's board of directors.
Journalists and Reporters
As of 2023, The New York Times Company has 5,800 employees, and about 1,700 of them are journalists. These journalists follow strict rules. For example, they cannot run for political office, give money to political campaigns, or publicly support political causes. They must also be careful about their sources and not accept gifts from people they might write about.
Journalists are expected to make sure everything they write is true and to use exact quotes. They have a special research team to help them check facts. The Times has reporters all over the world, in places like Beijing, London, Cairo, and Washington, D.C.
| Location | Chief |
|---|---|
  Afghanistan and Pakistan |
Christina Goldbaum |
 Albany, New York, United States |
Luis Ferré-Sadurní |
 Andes, South America |
Julie Turkewitz |
 Baghdad, Iraq |
N/A |
 Brazil |
Jack Nicas |
 Brussels, Belgium |
Matina Stevis-Gridneff |
 Beijing, China |
Keith Bradsher |
 Berlin, Germany |
Katrin Bennhold |
 Cairo, Egypt |
Vivian Yee |
| Chicago, Illinois, United States |
Julie Bosman |
 Eastern and Central Europe |
Andrew Higgins |
| Houston, Texas, United States |
J. David Goodman |
 Istanbul, Turkey |
Ben Hubbard |
 Kyiv, Ukraine |
Andrew Kramer |
 Jerusalem, Israel |
Patrick Kingsley |
 Johannesburg, South Africa |
John Eligon |
 London, England |
Mark Landler |
| Los Angeles, California, United States |
Corina Knoll |
| Miami, Florida |
Patricia Mazzei |
| Mid-Atlantic, United States |
Campbell Robertson |
 Moscow, Russia |
Anton Troianovski |
 Mexico City, Mexico |
Natalie Kitroeff |
| New England, United States |
Jenna Russell |
| New York City Hall, New York, United States |
Emma Fitzsimmons |
| New York Police Department, New York, United States |
Maria Cramer |
 Paris, France |
Roger Cohen |
 Persian Gulf |
Vivian Nereim |
 Rome, Italy |
Jason Horowitz |
| San Francisco, California, United States |
Heather Knight |
| Seattle, Washington, United States |
Mike Baker |
 South Asia |
Mujib Mashal |
 Southeast Asia |
Sui-Lee Wee |
 Seoul, South Korea |
Choe Sang-Hun |
| Shanghai, China |
Alexandra Stevenson |
 Sydney |
Damien Cave |
 Tokyo, Japan |
Motoko Rich |
 United Nations |
Farnaz Fassihi |
| Washington, D.C., United States |
Elisabeth Bumiller |
 West Africa |
Ruth Maclean |
What is the Editorial Board?
| The New York Times editorial board |
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The editorial board of The New York Times was created in 1896. This group writes opinion pieces for the newspaper. They work separately from the newsroom, which means their opinions do not affect how the news is reported. As of 2023, there are fourteen writers on the editorial board. The current opinion editor is Kathleen Kingsbury.
The editorial board's views have changed over time. They used to be against things like women's right to vote in the early 1900s. But later, they started to support more modern ideas. Since 1960, The New York Times has usually supported Democratic candidates in U.S. presidential elections. In 2016, for the first time, the editorial board wrote an article specifically against Donald Trump becoming president.
Workers' Unions
Since 1940, many workers at The New York Times, including journalists and tech staff, have been part of a union called the New York Times Guild. This union helps workers get fair pay and good working conditions. The Guild has gone on strike a few times in its history to protest changes or to ask for better contracts. For example, in 2022, the union held a one-day strike, which was the first time the paper had been interrupted like that since 1978. In May 2023, the union reached an agreement to increase salaries for employees.
What You Can Read in The Times
How Many People Read The Times?
As of May 2024, The New York Times has 10.5 million readers. Most of these are online readers (9.9 million), and 640,000 get the printed paper. This makes it the second-largest newspaper in the U.S. by print circulation. The New York Times Company hopes to have fifteen million readers by 2027.
The Times started charging for online articles in 2011. This helped the paper earn more money from readers than from ads. The newspaper is trying to reach a wider audience by buying companies like The Athletic and investing in things like The New York Times Games.
Newsletters and Special Features
In 2001, The New York Times started a financial newsletter called DealBook. It became a website in 2006 and is now a big part of the paper's financial news. The Times also hosts an annual conference called the DealBook Summit, where important leaders and business people speak.
From 2010 to 2013, The New York Times also had a political blog called FiveThirtyEight. This blog, written by Nate Silver, was famous for correctly predicting election results. It brought a lot of traffic to the Times's website.
In 2014, the Times launched The Upshot, a data-driven newsletter. It uses charts and graphs to explain complex topics like economics and politics. The Upshot created a popular "needle" graphic for the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, which showed the chances of a candidate winning.
Fun with Crosswords and Games
In February 1942, The New York Times crossword puzzle first appeared in The New York Times Magazine. The publisher at the time decided to add it after the attack on Pearl Harbor, thinking people would enjoy a distraction.
The New York Times also creates its own video games. In 2014, The New York Times Magazine introduced Spelling Bee, a word game where players find words from a set of letters. It became very popular when it moved to nytimes.com in 2018. Other games include Letter Boxed, Tiles, Vertex, and Connections.
In January 2022, The New York Times Company bought Wordle, a very popular word game. Many people worried that the Times would start charging for Wordle, but it remains free to play on their website.
Cooking and Recipes
The New York Times has been publishing recipes since the 1850s and has had a special food section since the 1940s. In 2014, the Times launched NYT Cooking, an app and website dedicated to recipes. It has over 21,000 recipes and includes videos.
The Times also tried a meal delivery service that would send ingredients for their recipes, but it closed down. They also used to have a wine club.
How The Times is Made
Writing Style and Rules
Since 1895, The New York Times has had a special rulebook for its writing style, called The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage.
One unique rule is that the Times uses titles like "Mr.," "Ms.," or "Dr." when talking about people. Most other big newspapers have stopped doing this. The Times believes it shows politeness. They also use academic and military titles for people in important positions. In 2015, they even added the gender-neutral title "Mx."
Catchy Headlines
Journalists at The New York Times do not write their own headlines. Instead, special copy editors write them. These editors have rules to follow: headlines should get to the main point of an article without giving away the ending. They should avoid slang and tabloid-style headlines. They also try not to end a line with small words like "a" or "the."
Sometimes, the Times changes headlines if there's new information or if the original headline causes confusion. For online articles, headlines can be longer than for print, where they have to fit in a small space. The Times even tests different headlines online to see which one readers click on more.
The Famous Nameplate
The nameplate, which is the special design of The New York Times title at the top of the front page, has been mostly the same since 1967. When it first started, the founder, Henry Jarvis Raymond, wanted it to look like The London Times.
Over the years, small changes were made to the letters. For example, the hyphen in "New-York" was removed in 1896. The biggest change happened in 1967 when a type designer redesigned the logo. He changed a small arrow shape into a diamond and, famously, removed the period that used to be at the end of "The New York Times."
Printing the Newspaper
As of December 2023, The New York Times has printed sixty thousand issues! This number is shown on the paper's masthead, next to the volume number.
The Times has made its print edition physically smaller over the years, but it still uses a large format called "broadsheet." This was done to save money on paper. The biggest change was in 2007, when the pages were made much narrower.
For major events, The New York Times often uses very large, bold headlines. These "hammer headlines" are carefully chosen by a team of editors. For example, when Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, the Times used a huge headline that said, "Biden Beats Trump."
Sometimes, if two big events happen at the same time, the Times uses a "paddle wheel" headline. This means both headlines are used, split by a line. This was used when Ronald Reagan became president at the same time that American hostages were released from Iran in 1981.
The Times has also printed opinion pieces from its editorial board on the front page only twice in its history. One time was in 2015, after a tragic event, when the editorial board called for stricter gun laws.
Since 1997, the main place where The New York Times is printed is in College Point, Queens. This huge building prints between 300,000 and 800,000 newspapers every day. Giant rolls of paper go through machines that print the ink. The finished newspapers are then wrapped and sent out. The College Point facility also prints other newspapers like The Wall Street Journal.
The Times has stopped its printing presses a few times to print new editions with breaking news. This happened when President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he wouldn't run for a second term in 1968, and when Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.
The Times Online
The Website
The New York Times website, nytimes.com, has changed a lot since it first launched. In 2006, the website was redesigned to focus more on videos and other multimedia. In 2008, for a big election day called "Super Tuesday," the Times created a special live election system. This day brought the most visitors ever to nytimes.com at that time.
Apps for Your Devices
The NYTimes app first came out when the Apple App Store launched in 2008. At first, it was simple, but later, a version for the iPad was released in 2010. Over time, the Times added more features and allowed people to subscribe to the app. They also released apps for Windows 8 and other devices.
In 2014, The New York Times launched three new apps: NYT Now (for quick news updates), NYT Opinion (for opinion pieces), and NYT Cooking (for recipes). These apps helped the Times offer different types of content to its readers.
Podcasts to Listen To
The New York Times has many podcasts. Their longest-running podcast is The Book Review Podcast, which started in 2006.
The most famous Times podcast is The Daily. It's a daily news podcast that started in 2017 and is hosted by Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise. It helps listeners understand the day's biggest news stories.
In 2021, The New York Times started testing a new app called "New York Times Audio." This app has podcasts from the Times, audio versions of articles, and even short audio stories. It also lets Times journalists read their own articles and add comments.
Other Publications
The Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a weekly magazine that comes out on Sundays with the newspaper. It's one of the few Sunday magazines still published by a major newspaper.
International Editions
The New York Times International Edition is a separate newspaper that is printed and distributed around the world. It helps people outside the U.S. read news from the Times.
The Times in Spanish
In February 2016, The New York Times launched a Spanish website called The New York Times en Español. It had translated articles and new reports from journalists in Mexico City. The goal was to reach Spanish-speaking readers, especially on mobile phones. The website had its own style guide to make sure the Spanish was correct for different countries. In September 2019, The New York Times stopped the separate operations of The New York Times en Español, but they still translate articles into Spanish.
The Times in Chinese
In June 2012, The New York Times also launched a Chinese website. This was to compete with other news organizations that had Chinese versions. The Times made sure its Chinese website followed its high journalism standards, even though the Chinese government sometimes blocks websites. In October 2012, the Chinese government blocked access to the Times's websites after they published an article about the wealth of a Chinese leader's family.
Awards and Why The Times is Important
Many Awards
As of 2023, The New York Times has won 137 Pulitzer Prizes. This is the most awards won by any publication, showing how important and respected its journalism is.
A Newspaper of Record
The New York Times is considered a "newspaper of record" in the United States. This means it is seen as an important source for historical information and a reliable record of events. It is the largest newspaper in New York City and the second-largest in the U.S. by print circulation.
Studies have shown that The New York Times is often cited in academic papers, even more than some well-known academic journals. It is also one of the most referenced sources on the internet, showing its wide influence. Many people believe that The New York Times helps shape how people use the English language and how news is reported across the country.
See also
In Spanish: The New York Times para niños
