[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 47 (Tuesday, March 14, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S3867]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            THE NEW YORK TIMES PUBLISHES ITS 50,000TH ISSUE

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, careful readers of the New York Times 
may have noticed something special below the nameplate on the front 
page of today's issue. Just beneath the familiar box--known as the left 
ear in newspaper parlance--announcing ``All the News That's Fit to 
Print,'' it says the following: ``Vol. CXLIV . . . No. 50,000.''
  The New York Times published its 50,000th issue today, a noteworthy 
milestone even for a newspaper as seemingly eternal and immutable as 
the great presence on West 43rd Street. The first issue of what was 
then called the New-York Daily Times appeared 143 years, 7 days ago, on 
Thursday, September 18, 1851. With only a very few interruptions, there 
has been an issue of the Times every day ever since.
  To give Senators a sense of the magnitude of this event: if one were 
to stack up 50,000 copies of the New York Times, the pile would be 300 
feet taller than the Empire State Building, which is 102 stories tall.
  Mr. President, I am sure all Senators will join me in offering 
congratulations and great good wishes to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the 
publisher of the New York Times, and to everyone else at the Nation's 
``newpaper of record,'' on this historic occasion. I ask unanimous 
consent that an article about the 50,000th issue from today's New York 
Times be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 14, 1995]

      The Times Publishes Its 50,000th Issue: 143 Years of History

                           (By James Barron)

       This was front-page news in No. 1: ``In England, political 
     affairs are quiet.'' So were two stories about New-York, a 
     city that still had a hyphen in its name: a 35-year-old 
     Manhattan woman had died in police custody, and two Death Row 
     inmates were facing execution.
       No. 25,320 was the one that said Lindbergh did it, flying 
     to Paris in 33\1/2\ hours. No. 30,634 described the Japanese 
     attack on Pearl Harbor. No. 35,178 reported that the Supreme 
     Court had banned segregation in public schools. No. 40,721 
     said that men had walked on the moon, No. 46,669 that the 
     Challenger had exploded.
       Today, 143 years and 177 days after No. 1 hit the streets, 
     The New York Times publishes Vol. CXLIV, No. 50,000--its 
     144th volume, or year, and 50,000th issue.
       Except for the Super Bowl and the copyrights in late-late 
     movies, Roman numerals have gone the way of long-playing 
     phonograph records and rotary-dial telephones. And in an 
     industry where the numbers that matter most involve 
     circulation and advertising lineage, the 50,000th issue is 
     the journalistic equivalent of a car odometer's rolling over. 
     The day will be noted in passing at The Times. The newspaper 
     is preparing to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Adolph 
     S. Ochs's purchase of the paper next year.
       ``The best way we can celebrate'' No. 50,000, Arthur Ochs 
     Sulzberger, the chairman of The New York Times Company, said 
     yesterday in a memorandum to the staff, ``is by insuring that 
     our 50,001st edition is the best newspaper we can possibly 
     produce.'' He added: ``I'll fax you another memo when our 
     75,000th edition comes out.''
       Still, 50,000 is a lot of anything. It is the number of 
     copies of John Steinbeck's ``Grapes of Wrath'' sold every 
     year in the United States, and the number of copies of Conrad 
     Hilton's autobiography, ``Be My Guest,'' stolen every year 
     from hotel rooms around the world, the number of rhinestones 
     that were in Liberace's grand piano and the number of 
     customers who crowd into Harrods in London every day.
       If all 50,000
        issues of The Times were stacked in a single pile, one 
     copy apiece, they would be roughly 300 feet taller than 
     the Empire State Building, or 200 feet taller than one of 
     the twin towers at the World Trade Center.
       The idea of 50,000 days of headlines summons memories. 
     Going by the numbers, No. 18,806 said the Titanic had sunk 
     after slamming into an iceberg near Newfoundland. No. 28,958 
     reported the explosion of the dirigible Hindenburg in 
     Lakehurst, N.J., and No. 34,828 the conquering of Mount 
     Everest. The 1965 blackout dominated No. 39,372; the one in 
     1977, No. 43,636.
       The Times has covered 28 Presidents (29 if Grover 
     Cleveland, who served two nonconsecutive terms, is counted 
     twice), starting with Millard Fillmore. No. 4,230 reported 
     the death of Abraham Lincoln, No. 38,654 the assassination of 
     John F. Kennedy and No. 42,566 the resignation of Richard M. 
     Nixon.
       Ten thousand issues ago, No. 40,000 reported that a crib 
     had been set up in the White House for Patrick Lyndon Nugent, 
     the five-week-old grandson of President Lyndon B. Johnson. He 
     was to stay in the White House while his parents took a 
     vacation in the Bahamas.
       No. 40,000 also reported that Ann W. Bradley was engaged to 
     Ramsey W. Vehslage, the president of the Bonney-Vehslage Tool 
     Company in Newark. No. 40,076, on Oct. 15, 1967, reported 
     that their wedding had taken place the day before in 
     Washington. Mr. Vehslage is still the president of the 
     family-owned company. But the person who answered the phone 
     at Bonney-Vehslage last week was Ramsey Jr., born on June 18, 
     1971 (an event not reported in No. 41,418, published that 
     day).
       Like No. 50,000 today, No. 30,000 hit the streets on a 
     March 14--Thursday, March 14, 1940. No. 10,000, on Sept. 24, 
     1883, reported that J.P. Morgan's yacht had sunk. That issue 
     had eight pages and a newsstand price of 2 cents. The daily-
     and-Sunday subscription price in those days was $7.50 a year.
       Vol. I, No. 1 of The New-York Daily Times, as the newspaper 
     was known, cost only a penny when it appeared on Thursday, 
     Sept. 18, 1851. There were no Sunday issues until No. 2,990 
     on April 21, 1861. But each day brought a new number, and the 
     continuity was preserved even when the paper was not 
     published. After strikes in 1923, 1953 and 1958, special 
     sections were printed containing pages that had been made up 
     when the paper was not published.
       Continuity was also preserved during a 114-day strike in 
     1962 and 1963. The Time's West Coast edition kept the numbers 
     going. (The West Coast edition had no Sunday issue, but for 
     the sake of continuity, the numbers skipped one between 
     Saturday and Monday.)
       In 1965, when a 24-day strike halted The Times's operations 
     in New York, its international edition in Paris kept 
     publishing. That justified keeping the numbers going, even 
     though the international edition had its own different 
     sequence. For that reason, the number of the issue published 
     in New York on Sept. 16, 1965, the last day before the 
     strike, was No. 39,317. The first day after the strike was 
     No. 39,342. The numbers from 39,318 to 39,341 were never 
     used.
       No such attempt at continuity was made during an 88-day 
     strike in 1978. By then, the Times had suspended its 
     international edition and become a partner in The 
     International Herald Tribune. The last issue of The Times 
     before the strike was No. 44,027. The first issue after the 
     strike was No. 44, 028.
       The Times is one of the last papers in America to print the 
     volume number (in Roman numerals) and the issue number (in 
     Arabic) on its front page. Dr. Holt Parker, an associate 
     professor of classics at the University of Cincinnati, knows 
     when this tradition began: in the Middle Ages, when scribes 
     copied texts by hand.
       Why does it continue? Dr. Parker can think of only one 
     reason. ``Because,'' he said, ``it looks good.''
     

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