NYT freak copy

My home-delivered copy of NYT on Sunday had a thick grey strip running right down Page 10 of the Business Section, blacking out columns of classifieds. Was the freak page a piece of avant-garde art or an act of vandalism by a graffiti artist at work during the paper's print-run? Maybe none of the above. Maybe it's oversight on the part of the production staff. Whatever the case, the freak copy, I thought, was a collector's item. And I have saved it to be shown to friends and media buffs in Mysore. If only to show that things can go wrong, even at NYT.

My Google search of the company history, to check for any record of such botch-up, revealed a load of other trivia in the life of NYT since it was first published as the New-York Daily Times on Sept.1851. The thing about the paper is that it is rich not only in reading material but also in ruddi value (not in the US). The Sunday paper on Sept.13, 1987 reportedly weighed 12 pounds, containing 1,612 pages. The largest week-day edition was printed on April 19, 2000, with 174 pages.

The NYT masthead slogan - 'All the News That's Fit to Print' - first appeared on Oct.25, 1896, on the editorial page. It was moved to Page One, on Feb.10, 1897.