[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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