Welcome to another edition of The First Time News Was Fit To Print, the semi-regular feature where we travel into the archives of The New York Times and find the first time the paper covered various subjects. If you have a suggestion for a future installment, leave a comment.

Disneyland

May 2, 1954

Land of Fantasia Is Rising on Coast
A cost estimate of $9,000,000 for the building of Disneyland was made today with the announcement that a 160-acre site had been selected for the ambitious amusement center and living museum of Americana conceived by Walt Disney.
* * *
Disneyland, which will resemble a giant motion-picture set, is described by Mr. Disney as a “combination of a world’s fair, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts and a show place of beauty and magic. Once you walk through its portals you leave today behind and enter a world of yesterday, tomorrow and Fantasy.”
* * *
“Disneyland,” he added, “will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and hard facts that created America. And it will be uniquely equipped to dramatize these dreams and facts and send them forth as a sort of courage and inspiration to all the world.”

Continue reading for the first mentions of Bobby Bowden, search engines and something called “Texlahoma.”

Texlahoma

May 26, 1935

Texlahoma Urged as 49th State
Texlahoma, a forty-ninth State in the Union, comprised of counties in Western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, with a combined population exceeding a million, would be created if a proposal being placed before citizens of both States were approved.
* * *
The most curious aspect of the incident, however, arises from the manner in which it is reviving that fallacious notion, always widely held, that under terms of its annexation ninety years ago Texas has peculiar rights to divide itself into new States. This idea arose from a misinterpretation of the clause in the joint resolution of Congress annexing Texas by which the Missouri compromise line was carried to the west boundary of Texas. At that time Texas claimed territory far north, and provision was merely being made that States subsequently carved from Teas should be slave below the compromise line and free above.

Bobby Bowden

January 3, 1970

Carlen Is Hired by Texas Tech; Bowden Replaces Him at West Virginia
Robert C. (Bobby) Bowden moved up to head coach at West Virginia today succeeding Jim Carlen. Bowden, 40 years old, had been the offensive coach for the Mountaineers since February, 1966.
* * *
He started his coaching career at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., where he was assistant football coach and head track coach. He left Samford in 1955 to become head football and baseball coach at South Georgia Junior College.

Search Engine

August 30, 1992

The Executive Computer: A Fast Way to Discover Patterns in Vast Amounts of Data
In the financial markets particularly, all the data needed for research are generally publicly available, but few traders have the luxury of enough time to spend researching data, poring over charts and reading reams of analysis. And often they are not willing to commit the time or money needed to have a researcher check out a convoluted hunch — especially if the hunch requires going back through 70 years of stock market data and economic indicators.

Mr. Li of Duich Investment said he was impressed with how quickly the Market Information Machine (MIM), created by Logical Information Machines Inc. of Austin, Tex., can sift through years of data and display the results as graphs. His system is loaded with about 1,500 megabytes of market data — about 1.5 billion characters. “It retrieves data almost instantaneously,” Mr. Li said. And, of course, “as traders, we really, really like speed,” he said.

Duich Investment leases the MIM software, which includes the data base search engine and the historic market data, and runs it on a Unix work station. The software costs the company about $2,500 a month, depending on options.

Gerrymandering

October 3, 1851

Ohio Politics
The Whig journals in Ohio say that the election which comes off in that State in a few days will be one of the most important in its results ever had in that action…[Those elected] will also have the dividing of the State into Congressional Districts—and past experience justifies the fear that if the Opposition get the power in their hands they will Gerrymander the State unscrupulously for their own benefit.

Here are a few topics covered in previous editions…

Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade

November 26, 1924

Santa to Lead a Parade: Will Be Accompanied by Toyland Notables
Santa Claus, accompanied by several bands and a circus contingent made up of professionals and employees of R.H. Macy & Co., will parade six miles through the city Thanksgiving morning.
* * *
Santa, with his retinue of clowns, and prominent personages in toyland, such as Mother Goose, Little Red Riding Hood, Little Miss Muffet and the Three Men in the Tub, then will be escorted to the ground floor [of Macy's], where he will be crowned. Thereupon he will unveil Macy’s Christmas spectacle, “Fairyfolk Frolics in Wondertown.”

Paternity Leave

September 8, 1968

Paternity Leave Urged
Mother should not be the only one coddled a bit after baby’s birth, according to RN, the nurses’ magazine, UPI reports. It suggested that the father “merits a two-week paternity leave from his work so he can be with his wife during childbirth and help later with the housework.”

George Clooney

July 1, 1990

Popular Films Are Feeding The Series Maw
This season’s spinoffs…are likely to have a certain familiarity about them, especially after the producers and the networks get through tinkering with the movie premises. In ABC’s Baby Talk, for example, the father substitute, a cab driver played in the film by John Travolta, becomes a handyman, played by George Clooney. This gives him a reason to hang around the house – and pursue a romance – with the single mother, played by Kirstie Alley in the movie and Connie Sellecca in the series. Ms. Sellecca’s character also gets a time-honored foil, another single mom who lives next door.

Tommy John Surgery

October 29, 1988

Surgery for Tudor
John Tudor, the Los Angeles Dodger left-hander who suffered a torn ligament in his pitching elbow after only one and a third innings in the World Series, underwent reconstructive elbow surgery Thursday. Dr. Frank Jobe, the team physician, said the surgery should enable Tudor to return by the middle of next season.

Tudor underwent “Tommy John surgery,” which Jobe developed for the former Dodger and current Yankee pitcher in 1974 in which damaged ligament was replaced with a tendon from his left forearm. Jobe also removed frayed cartilage by arthroscope from Tudor’s left shoulder and removed two screws from the 34-year-old’s right knee, which was broken 16 months ago when Barry Lyons of the Mets crashed into him in the St. Louis Cardinal dugout while chasing a foul pop.

See Also…

• Greatest Hits of 2007 (Walkman, Email, Jerry Seinfeld and more)
• Greatest Hits of 2008 (Princess Diana, Personal Computer, John McCain and more)
• See all the previous installments of The First Time News Was Fit To Print
• November 3, 2007: Appearance on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday

Want to play along at home? Get complete access to the New York Times archives by becoming an NYT subscriber.

Every now and again, we head into the archives of The New York Times to find the first time the paper covered a particular topic. With the media offering non-stop coverage of his memorial service today, let’s look back at what the Times had to say about Michael Jackson when he was just getting started:

Michael Jackson

April 25, 1973

The Jackson Five, black and from Detroit, were the pioneers, and their weeny-bopper attraction is Michael, now aged 14, who at this year’s Academy Award ceremonies sang “Ben,” the only love song written so far to a real, live rat.

Merchandising right ahead, Michael’s recording company has recorded him as a solo artist. his latest album is Music and Me, which is a further example of his career direction. To have him sing such an emotive tearjerker as the old teen-age ballad “Too Young” is to move him far away from the Jackson Five’s early roots, which were solidly commercial rhythm and blues.
* * *
To pop purists, this may be regrettable, but commercially it is an astute move toward maturity and longevity. After all, Michael Jackson is 14 and already they are talking about how old David Cassidy (of the Partridge Family) appears to be to the teeny-boppers.

Keep reading for early reaction to ‘Thriller,’ Bubbles and more.

Off the Wall

October 21, 1979

The Evolution of Pop Soul
The fall’s best new pop-soul record, Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, is also Motown-related in that Mr. Jackson grew up in the Motown fold as the boy wonder-lead singer of the Jackson Five. Off the Wall is his first solo album since the Jackson family signed with Epic several years ago, and it marks his ultimate transition from child star to adult singing idol. The album teams Mr. Jackson with producer Quincy Jones, the brilliant jazz and pop arranger-conductor-composer.
* * *
Although at this point in his career, Michael Jackson may lack Stevie Wonder’s emotional depth, he’s already the equal of both Mr. Wonder and Smokey Robinson, the other obvious Motown prototype, in technical control.

Thriller

December 19, 1982

Michael Jackson’s Thriller: Superb Job
Since he caught the public’s fancy as a bouncing, spinning, piping, 11-year-old mini-superstar in 1970, Michael Jackson has been a full-fledged celebrity, living a celebrity’s life. That’s worth remembering, because it means that today, one must guard against the assumption that he is a mature, fully formed artist and human being. He is certainly a seasoned veteran: His whole life has been shaped by entertainment, and he is a practiced – sometimes too practiced – performer, recording star and film actor. But he remains a young man, and with luck he will continue to mature.
* * *
Thriller is a wonderful pop record, the latest statement by one of the great singers in popular music today. But it is more than that. It is as hopeful a sign as we have had yet that the destructive barriers that spring up regularly between white and black music – and between whites and blacks – in this culture may be breached once again. Most important of all, it is another signpost on the road to Michael Jackson’s own artistic fulfillment.

“We Are The World”

February 27, 1985

Artists Join in Effort for Famine Relief
On March 11, Columbia Records will release “We Are the World,” a new song written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson and performed by a chorus of 45 pop stars calling themselves USA for Africa (United Support of Artists for Africa). Roughly 90 percent of the proceeds…will be donated to African famine relief. Another 10 percent will go to fight homelessness and malnutrition in the United States.

“We Are the World” is an American response to “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” the single that was recorded late last year in London by Band Aid, a group of British rock stars. The record became the most successful single in British history, selling 3.5 million copies in Britain and 2.5 million in the United States and raising $9.2 million.
* * *
What had begun as a supersession of black singers expanded after Bruce Springsteen agreed to become involved. Some of the stars who ended up donating their talents were Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, Huey Lewis, Paul Simon and Dionne Warwick.
* * *
The We Are the World album, which Quincy Jones is supervising, will include previously unreleased tracks by a number of major stars. Linda Ronstadt is contributing “Keeping Out of Mischief,” Prince “Tears in Your Eyes,” and Bruce Springsteen a live version of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped.”

Bubbles

September 14, 1987

Jackson Conquers Tokyo
Mr. Jackson arrived at Narita Airport Wednesday, and although the concerts’ sponsors, N.T.T., Pepsico and Nihon Television, attempted to keep his arrival date and time a secret, hundreds of fans were there to greet him.

Mr. Jackson’s pet chimpanzee Bubbles, who has received almost as much publicity here as the rock star, arrived a few hours earlier, wearing a red and white striped shirt and denim overalls. Bubbles was accompanied by three members of Mr. Jackson’s staff.

Department stores in Tokyo have been selling stuffed chimpanzees called “Michael’s Pets” in honor of Bubbles. And the ice-cream store chain Hobson’s advertised it was celebrating the beginning of Mr. Jackson’s concert tour by giving away a free scoop of ice cream to each customer who purchased a $21 stuffed Bubbles.

More from mental_floss…

• See all the previous installments of The First Time News Was Fit To Print
• Greatest Hits of 2007 (Walkman, Email, Jerry Seinfeld and more)
• Greatest Hits of 2008 (Princess Diana, Personal Computer, John McCain and more)
• November 3, 2007: Appearance on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday

Want to play along at home? Get complete access to the New York Times archives by becoming an NYT subscriber.

I just heard that the Sony Walkman turns 30 this week. To celebrate, let’s revisit the first time The New York Times gave it a mention, in an article titled “Stereo-to-Go – and Only You Can Hear”:

“Josh Lansing and the young blonde woman had never even met before, but as they passed each other on Madison Avenue the other afternoon, she waved and smiled and he tipped his headphones in salute….What the two well-dressed strangers first noticed about each other was that they were both possessors of the newest status symbol around town: the Walkman, a portable stereo unit (priced in most stores at $200), consisting of an ultra-light headphone set plugged into a cassette player that weighs in at less than 14 ounces, batteries included. ‘It’s just like Mercedes-Benz owners honking when they pass each other on the road,’ explained Mr. Lansing, whose cassette hung from his Gucci belt.”

Originally published July 7, 1980. You can read all the previous installments of ‘The First Time News Was Fit To Print’ here.

It’s time for another edition of The First Time News Was Fit To Print, the semi-regular feature where we travel into the archives of The New York Times to find the first time the paper covered various subjects. If you have a suggestion for a future installment, leave a comment.

Hubble Telescope

January 3, 1989

Delayed NASA Missions Prepare for Takeoff
In December the long-awaited Hubble Space Telescope is scheduled to be lofted into Earth orbit from a shuttle, giving astronomers not only a clearer view of the entire solar system but of stars and galaxies virtually all the way out to the edge of the observable universe. Scientists, barely containing their excitement, believe that the huge optical telescope should bring about a transformation in observational astronomy comparable to the one after the astronomer Galileo looked at the heavens with a telescope nearly four centuries ago.

Keep reading for LeBron James, CNN and more.

LeBron James

July 9, 2001

Hitting the Lottery as a Junior?
A stellar array of basketball cognoscenti that included scouts from almost every N.B.A. team and college coaches…flocked yesterday to see some 220 of the best high school players in the world showcased at Fairleigh Dickinson’s Rothman Athletic Center. One player in particular, however, caught much of their attention.

He is a 16-year-old from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio, who will be a junior in the fall. Many of the gathered connoisseurs believed that the lad, LeBron James, a 6-foot-7, 210-pound point guard, shooting guard and small forward — sometimes he plays as if he is all three in one, a kind of hoops Swiss Army knife — would have been taken in the first round of the most recent N.B.A. draft, possibly a lottery pick.
* * *
Tom Konchalski, who evaluates high school players for his respected H.S.B.I. Report, said: “LeBron isn’t an extraterrestrial athlete, but he has a tremendous feel for the game. He sees situations two passes ahead of the play. He’s been compared to Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady. But I think he has a better feel for the game than they do.”

He meant than they did when they were James’s age, right? “No, I mean right now,” Konchalski said. “I doubt seriously if he’s going to college.”

CNN

May 23, 1979

Cable-TV News Network Set Up
The Cable News Network, to begin operations a year from now, is to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Turner Communications Inc., an Atlanta-based company whose chairman is R.E. (Ted) Turner. The network’s principal program, according to Mr. Turner, will be a two-hour newscast that would serve as alternative programming to the prime-time entertainment offerings of the commercial television networks.
* * *
The cable news network has signed as regular contributors Roland Evans and Robert Novak, political columnists; Jean Dixon, astrologer; Dr. Joyce Brothers, psychologist and television personality, and Dr. Neil Solomon, medical reporter.

Secretariat

August 16, 1972

Linda’s Chief Heads Saratoga Field Today
A meeting between undefeated Linda’s Chief and the formidable Secretariat will be the big attraction tomorrow, with the 59th running of the Sanford Stakes. There are five others in this six-furlong sprint for 2-year-olds but the big expectation is a duel between this pair.
* * * * *
Secretariat has yet to compete in stakes, and has a record of two victories in his three attempts. His only setback came in his debut, when he was impeded at the start.

newyorktimes.com

January 22, 1996

The New York Times Introduces a Web Site
The New York Times begins publishing daily on the World Wide Web today, offering readers around the world immediate access to most of the daily newspaper’s contents.

The New York Times on the Web, as the electronic publication is known, contains most of the news and feature articles from the current day’s printed newspaper, classified advertising, reporting that does not appear in the newspaper, and interactive features including the newspaper’s crossword puzzle. The electronic newspaper (address: http:/www.nytimes.com) is part of a strategy to extend the readership of The Times and to create opportunities for the company in the electronic media industry.
* * *
With its entry on the Web, The Times is hoping to become a primary information provider in the computer age and to cut costs for newsprint, delivery and labor. Companies that have established Web-based information sites include television networks, computer companies, on-line information services, magazines and even individuals creating electronic newspapers of their own.
* * *
“The market is booming for newspapers on the World Wide Web,” consultant John Kelsey said.

From Previous Installments…

Walkman

July 7, 1980

Stereo-to-Go – and Only You Can Hear It
Josh Lansing and the young blonde woman had never even met before, but as they passed each other on Madison Avenue the other afternoon, she waved and smiled and he tipped his headphones in salute….What the two well-dressed strangers first noticed about each other was that they were both possessors of the newest status symbol around town: the Walkman, a portable stereo unit (priced in most stores at $200), consisting of an ultra-light headphone set plugged into a cassette player that weighs in at less than 14 ounces, batteries included. “It’s just like Mercedes-Benz owners honking when they pass each other on the road,” explained Mr. Lansing, whose cassette hung from his Gucci belt.

Digital Camera

May 29, 1991

Kodak Introduces Electronic Camera
The Eastman Kodak Company took its first real step into digital photography by introducing an electronic camera system that can turn a conventional Nikon into a high-tech electronic camera. Kodak’s professional digital camera system will sell for about $20,000 and is intended primarily for photojournalists and government surveillance, the company said. The system also marks Kodak’s first move into pure electronic photography, where images are captured and created without film.

Books on Tape

February 20, 1977

Catching Up With the Classics
Want to catch up on your reading while driving cross-country? Or dip into the classics while sunning with eyes closed on a secluded Caribbean beach? A California outfit called Books on Tape makes it happen.

Described as the “thinking man’s answer to CB radio,” Books on Tape was conceived in Los Angeles a few years back to aid long-haul commuters avoid “cerebral atrophy” occasioned by long traffic tie-ups on freeways.
* * * * *
Clients are able to rent the cassettes at fees ranging from $6.50 to $7.50 for a complete work, based on a one-month rental period, plus $1.75 for postage and handling. If one had to buy the tapes, the purchase price would be somewhere around $50.

Lee Harvey Oswald

November 3, 1959

American Awaits Soviet Word
Lee Harvey Oswald shut himself in his hotel room today to await a decision on his request for Soviet citizenship. Mr. Oswald, a former Marine from Fort Worth, Texas, turned in his American passport to the United States Embassy here [in Moscow] last week-end. “I am awaiting a reply from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on my application for citizenship and have nothing to say meanwhile,” he said over the telephone.

Zip Codes

November 29, 1962

New Mail Codes Will Aid Sorters
The Post Office Department will add a five-digit number to everyone’s address after July 1. The new number will be called the zip code.

Postmaster General J. Edward Day, who announced the plan today, said the digit code would help postal clerks pinpoint the destination of mail as it was sorted. He said this could speed delivery by as much as 24 hours.

To help publicize the plan, the department has created a cartoon character named Mr. Zip. “Zip” stands for Zone Improvement Plan.
* * * * *
Mr. Day he did not expect the new system to bring about any reduction in the postal payroll or in postal rates. The volume of mail increases every year and, in any case, most postal employees are letter carriers.

“I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where a clanking robot brings mail to your door.”

David Bowie

July 11, 1971

Bowie, Bolan, Heron – Superstars?
Mind and music are a powerful team, too. David Bowie is the most intellectually brilliant man yet to choose the long-playing album as his medium of expression. His best album is Man of Words/Man of Music* (Mercury). It is over a year old and not easy to find in record stores, but it is well worth special-ordering or sending to England for or borrowing from a friend. It is worth any three records now on the charts.

*This album was re-released in the United States as Space Oddity in 1972.

See Also…

• Greatest Hits of 2007 (Walkman, Email, Jerry Seinfeld and more)
• Greatest Hits of 2008 (Princess Diana, Personal Computer, John McCain and more)
• See all the previous installments of The First Time News Was Fit To Print
• November 3, 2007: Appearance on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday

Want to play along at home? Get complete access to the New York Times archives by becoming an NYT subscriber.

It’s time for another edition of The First Time News Was Fit To Print, the semi-regular feature where we travel into the archives of The New York Times and find the first time the paper covered various subjects. If you have a suggestion for a future installment, leave a comment.

Chat Rooms

June 20, 1993

Tomorrow’s TV: Will They Sit By The Set, Or Ride A Data Highway?
“It surprised us,” said Stephen M. Case, the company’s president, “to discover that our subscribers don’t look to America Online primarily as a source of information. They see it more as a chance to communicate with other subscribers.”

Subscribers can talk directly to one another in “chat rooms” — subnetworks in which up to two-dozen people can type comments to one another. One recent evening, for instance, a chat-room visitor could watch scrolling down the screen a conversation comparing the weather in Florida and Mississippi, which seemed an opportune time to break in and ask the people in the room why they subscribed to America Online. Answers immediately appeared.

“AOL manages to take a depersonalizing technology and make it personal via chat rooms like this,” replied someone going by the screen name of BRUX.

“It’s user friendly,” FIRECRKR typed. “Any idiot can use AOL, even this one! You don’t even have to know how to spll.”

Matt Lauer

April 18, 1993

The Anchor As Sex Symbol
NBC News seems to be producing a string of on-air heartthrobs. First, there was Arthur Kent. Then Stone Phillips. Now there’s Matt Lauer.

Mr. Lauer, the co-host, with Jane Hanson, of WNBC’s 6 A.M. newscast, Today in New York, recently substituted for Bryant Gumbel on the Today show for three days.

Does NBC have big plans for him? “I don’t think I would call it a tryout,” said the anchor, 35, who was born in Manhattan and grew up in Westchester County. “I would call it a great opportunity that was handed to me with no strings attached.”

Keep reading for the first mentions of peanut butter, garage door openers, Twitter, Bob Dylan and more.

Twitter

April 22, 2007

From Many Tweets, One Loud Voice On The Internet
Twitter, which was created by a 10-person start-up in San Francisco called Obvious, is a heady mixture of messaging; social networking of the sort associated with Web sites like MySpace; the terse, jittery personal revelations of “microblogging” found on services like Jaiku; and something called “presence,” shorthand for the idea that people should enjoy an “always on” virtual omnipresence.

It’s easy to satirize Twitter’s trendiness, and cranky critics have mocked the banality of most tweets and questioned whether we really need such an assault upon our powers of concentration. But right now, it’s one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet.

In March, when Twitter was voted “best of the Web” at South by Southwest, the annual multimedia and music festival in Austin, the service had 100,000 members, according to Biz Stone, an engineer at Obvious. The festival prize prompted, or coincided with, a remarkably rapid adoption of Twitter by the international digerati. Although Obvious has become secretive about how many people use Twitter, Evan Williams, the founder of Obvious, told me that there were three and a half times more tweets in the second week of April than there were before South by Southwest.

[Follow mental_floss on Twitter.]

Garage Door Opener

October 3, 1948

Electric Wiring: Adequate System Needed For Safety And Comfort
An item that is growing in popularity with suburbanites is the automatic garage door opener. Available in several variations, this device makes it possible to open or close the garage door without getting out of the car. In one type a flat plate locked in the driveway contains a treadle switch which raises an overhead garage door when the car wheel passes over the plate. An electric-eye witch operates another type of door opener.

Peanut Butter

December 15, 1902

In The Shops
Apple butter has a rival. It is date butter and it is said to be excellent. Peanut butter is well known now, and nut butter, when the nut is not specified, is made of pecan nuts.
* * *
Shelled nuts of all kinds can be found now and at reasonable prices, 40 cents a pound for most of them. Walnuts, pecans, filberts, Brazil nuts, hickory, black walnuts, pistachios, and pignolias can be bought shelled.
* * *
It is an old story that shelled almonds are to be found, and these come salted also. Salted pecans are liked fully as well by some people.

SkyMall

June 9, 1992

United Adds Shopping Service On Most Domestic Flights
United Airlines has added a new feature to its domestic fleet: allowing passengers to order products from 13 companies by telephone. Some items can be delivered as soon as an aircraft lands. The service, called High Street Emporium, could double orders to Phoenix-based Skymall Inc., which supplies the catalogue, within several months, said Jan Redding, marketing director for the privately held company.

Alex Trebek

May 11, 1987

Shop-At-Home Program Fails To Show And Tell
It seemed an irresistible idea: a television show combining the fevered allure of the home-shopping craze with the proven appeal of the traditional talk-show format. If it caught on, the thinking went, it could be the most profitable use of the public airwaves ever contrived.

That was what Lorimar-Telepictures, the giant independent television studio that produces Dallas, Max Headroom and a half-dozen other network shows, had in mind in January when it began ValueTelevision. The one-hour syndicated program, starring Alex Trebek and Meredith MacRae, was sold to 72 stations across the country.

Apparently, shopping is not a spectator sport. ValueTelevision has been a ratings disaster, prompting a drastic format overhaul and a change in hosts and producer.

Huffington Post

April 25, 2005

A Boldface Name Invites Others To Blog With Her
Get ready for the next level in the blogosphere.

Arianna Huffington, the columnist and onetime candidate for governor of California, is about to move blogging from the realm of the anonymous individual to the realm of the celebrity collective.

She has lined up more than 250 of what she calls “the most creative minds” in the country to write a group blog that will range over topics from politics and entertainment to sports and religion.
* * *
While many of the bloggers are on the left of the political spectrum, some conservatives have also signed on, among them Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of The Washington Times, and David Frum, the writer who coined the phrase “axis of evil” when he was a speechwriter for President Bush.

In a solicitation letter to hundreds of people in her eclectic Rolodex, Ms. Huffington said the site “won’t be left wing or right wing; indeed, it will punch holes in that very stale way of looking at the world.”

From Previous Installments…

Bob Dylan

September 29, 1961

20-Year-Old Singer Is Bright New Face At Gerde’s Club

Resembling a cross between a choir boy and a beatnik, Mr. Dylan has a cherubic look and a mop of tousled hair he partly covers with a Huck Finn black corduroy cap. His clothes may need a bit of tailoring, but when he works his guitar, harmonica or piano and composes new songs faster than he can remember them, there is no doubt that he is bursting at the seams with talent.
* * *
But if not for every taste, his music-making has the mark of originality and inspiration, all the more noteworthy for his youth. Mr. Dylan is vague about his antecedents and birthplace, but it matters less where he has been than where he is going, and that would seem to be straight up.

iPhone

December 15, 1997

Cyberspace Cutting Edge Seems Pretty Dull
It sure was big, whatever it was. More than 65,000 people last week jammed into the Javits Center to attend Internet World, which has become one of the nation’s largest trade shows.

But unlike other huge industry events, most notably Comdex, there was less sense that any particular development was revolutionary than that it was time to pay attention to make the reality of switches and networks live up to the dreamy prognostications of techno-utopians.
* * * * *
Many of the 600 exhibitors focused on hardware, software and services of use to those putting together Web sites. Hot categories included programs to serve as hosts for catalogs and take payments for goods and services on line.

Several specialized hardware devices were introduced. For example, Cidco, a telephone accessory maker introduced the iPhone, a $500 telephone with a black-and-white screen that can be used for surfing the World Wide Web. And Encanto began selling a $1,000 all-inclusive device that small business can use to be host of their own Web sites.

Digital Watch

July 21, 1973

A Watch That Takes the Hard Time Out of Telling Time
Now there’s a new toy for the man with a collection of watches. The digital watch, which is operated by a sort of tiny computer, takes all the guess work out of time reading by flashing the hours and minutes in numerals on its face.
* * * * *
Sales are brisk although the Pulsar is not a thing of beauty compared to many good watches. The watch itself is thick, to accommodate its computer and battery, and weighs about four ounces with its metal strap. Until its “command” button is pressed, it shows nothing but a blank, dark-red face and looks like a dead television screen. But that, presumably, is the fun of owning one. Ask the Pulsar wearer what time it is, and without saying a word, he presses the button and you know it’s 9:42.

Drudge Report

December 30, 1996

Take away corporate influence on the Web and what do you have? Original fun.
Corporate sites are usually the polar opposite of the homegrown, wildly original sites that drove the Web’s early popularity. In the spirit of remembering whence we came, what follows is a list of decidedly uncorporate Web sites, compiled for your enjoyment andpossibly, inspiration.

The Drudge Report (http://www.lainet.com/drudge/)

A remarkable site that links to virtually every magazine, newspaper or news service on the Web and includes Drudge’s own commentary. For its sheer utility, just moved to the top of my bookmark list.

These quirky sites are a minuscule sample of the diversity on the Web today. Turning the Internet into a mass medium is fine, but it is far more thrilling to contemplate what might happen in a world where more people have the means to express their creativity to each other — without the censors, filters and gatekeepers that the mass media employ.

Yankee Stadium

December 18, 1921

Yankee Stadium to Seat 80,000 Fans
The structure will represent the most recent – in fact, the up-to-the-minute – discoveries and developments in stadium construction, with drawbacks noted in other stadia eliminated. Particular attention will be given to looking after the convenience of women patrons and making them as comfortable as possible. The tribe of female fans is expected to increase speedily as soon as the new park is thrown open.
* * * * *
All around the outside of “Yankee Stadium,” which is to be the official name of the place, an areaway seven feet in width will be left in order to provide for future development of stores and storage places. This is a novel feature in such plants.

Mel Kiper, Jr.

April 6, 1981

The Draftnik Papers
What do you do if you are an 18-year-old junior college student with little interest in school but a lot in sports? Mel Kiper Jr. of Baltimore solved that problem by dropping out of college and going into the sports business. He began operating a service to provide inside information on college and pro football teams to bettors or anyone who wants to use it. Kiper extracted information from any source he could find, such as newspapers, games on television and contacts around the country. He began getting people to make videotape recordings from television of games in their areas. He then analyzed the games.
* * * * *
Last month he brought out a 96-page magazine-like publication on the draft that reads like a report a pro team might compile. The 1981 Draft Report, for a price of $20, is so detailed that it not only gives names, weights, heights and speeds of the best prospects for the National Football League draft later this month, but also analyzes the needs of each team, projects next year’s top prospects and even discusses the attitude problems of some of this season’s top prospects.

Of Leonard Mitchell, a 270-pound University of Houston tackle, Kiper brashly writes: “Will need to show more dedication and prove that he wants to excel.”

Labrador Retriever

May 3, 1914

Dog As Caddy: Scarcity Of Boys Causes Innovation On English Golf Links
An innovation has lately been made by a player on the Tyneside golf course at Rytown, which is likely to be adopted on other courses, particularly where engaged couples like to indulge in the game without human observers. At Rytown, in order to overcome difficulties created by a scarcity of caddies, the player in question trained his dog, a Labrador retriever, to carry his clubs and hunt for lost balls.
* * * * *
“From every point of view the dog is so much the superior of the boy as a caddy that I expect to see dogs used universally in the future. With a dog as your caddy there is no one to hear you swear and no one to make fun of your play.”

[Note: The phrase "Labrador Retrievers" (plural) was used once before, in March of 1914. This was funnier.]

See Also…

• Greatest Hits of 2007 (Walkman, Email, Jerry Seinfeld and more)
• Greatest Hits of 2008 (Princess Diana, Personal Computer, John McCain and more)
• See all the previous installments of The First Time News Was Fit To Print
• November 3, 2007: Appearance on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday

Want to play along at home? Get complete access to the New York Times archives by becoming an NYT subscriber.

The piece opens (emphasis added):

Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days.

This is a really smart essay. Shirky knows what he’s talking about, and his writing is entertaining. Here’s one more key snippet:

The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!” The details differed, but the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses.

Read the rest for a smart look at newspapers in the online era.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr user Matt Callow, used under Creative Commons license.)

It’s time for another edition of The First Time News Was Fit To Print, where we travel into the archives of The New York Times and find the first time the paper covered various subjects. If you have a suggestion for a future installment, leave a comment.

Automated Teller Machines

October 9, 1975

Methods of Future Displayed Here; Exhibit Portends More Automation for Banking
Bankers are moving with all deliberate speed into the age of automation and electronics, if the exhibition accompanying the centennial convention of the American Bankers Association can be used as an indicator of industry trends.
* * *
James E. Lodge, director of operations, automated division of the A.B.A., said there were three forms of electronic funds-transfer systems: 1) Automated clearing house for checks. 2) Automated teller machines to make banking more convenient for customers. 3) Point-of-sale devices at store checkout counters.
* * *
While the electronic gear of the future purred, hummed and pinged, the hucksterism of earlier ages at many booths showed bankers how to bring the customer into the tent with premiums of Bibles, tennis racquets and hand-painted portraits.

Laptop

April 16, 1985

Portable Computers Show Signs of Losing Weight
Accompanied by much grunting, huffing and heaving, the first “portable” computers lumbered into the marketplace several years ago. Some of them weighed 30 pounds or more, hardly dainty enough to be carried gracefully while dashing through an airport, and they were priced as if they were worth their weight in gold.

While the pricetags of portables are still relatively fat, the computers themselves are becoming mere wisps, often weighing less than 10 pounds and small enough to slip inside a briefcase. These sleek models are called laptops, and more and more of them are showing up in classrooms, courtrooms, commuter trains and airport lounges.

There are now more than a dozen laptops on the market. Some have small display screens and no disk storage and can run all day on penlight batteries, while others have almost all the features of a desktop computer, including a voracious hunger for power. At least half a dozen others are on the drawing board, including the much rumored but vaporous “Clamshell” from International Business Machines.

Conan O’Brien

April 27, 1993

NBC Has Picked an Unknown Writer to Replace Letterman
NBC has hired a 30-year-old unknown comedy writer, Conan O’Brien, to replace David Letterman as the host of its Late Night comedy and talk show. Mr. O’Brien’s only previous appearances on television have been as an unbilled background player in some sketches on Saturday Night Live.

Mr. O’Brien, who previously worked for NBC as a Saturday Night Live writer and has most recently been a writer and a producer for the Fox comedy The Simpsons, will inherit one of the most visible jobs in television. “Late Night” commands up to $70 million a year in advertising revenues.
* * *
NBC began negotiations with representatives of an established comedy star, Garry Shandling, about taking the job. Mr. Shandling removed himself from consideration yesterday, even though a multi-year contract worth about $5 million a year was at stake.
* * *
“We think Conan can be the voice of a new generation in late-night,” an NBC executive said. “You have Jay and David and Chevy Chase, all baby-boomers. Conan will speak to younger viewers.”

[Conan's name had been printed once before, in a list of people associated with The Simpsons on September 24, 1992.]

Suze Orman

February 5, 1989

Going After the Grey Dollars
The financial services industry has lately been discovering a whole “new” market: the 82 million Americans who are 50 years old and over and, in particular, the 32 million or so who are over 65.
* * *
Obviously, the less income that is subject to regular tax, the lower the surtax. Thus, the big push to sell municipal bonds and bond funds, unit investment trusts and such relatively obscure products as certificates of annuity.

The certificates are at the heart of an innovative “surtax survival” program offered by Suze Orman, who heads an insurance brokerage in Emeryville, Calif. These hybrid vehicles, based on traditional fixed-rate annuities, come in maturities of 1 to 10 years. Taxes are deferred on earnings until the money is withdrawn. The certificates carry small commissions paid by the underwriter, unlike traditional annuities, which usually carry larger commissions paid by the buyer.

Ms. Orman is positioning the certificates as an alternative to broker-sold municipal bonds and bond funds and other insurance products like universal life, which impose commissions or sales charges of up to 10 percent.

To help with the positioning, Ms. Orman is forming a nonprofit corporation to be financed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s Metlife division and the Sunlife Insurance Company of America. The company, called Consumers for Retirement Independence, will dispense information on the surtax and bolster sales of the certificates.

Credit Default Swap

June 5, 2005

See a Bubble?
The saving grace is that home loans generally are the last thing people default on. But imagine how scary it would be if, say, businesses extended floating-rate contracts to one another — if virtually every company were dependent on making the right calculation about how these risk-avoidance vehicles would function.

Well, actually, they do. They are called derivatives. Derivatives are contracts that call for one party to pay another according to the movement of an underlying yardstick, like a foreign currency, a bond, a stock or even the weather. Since the 1980’s, Wall Street has marketed derivatives as a tool for making risk more palatable, and Alan Greenspan has consistently praised them for enabling firms to spread, or “manage,” their risk. For instance, a bank can hedge against the risk that one of its loans will sour. It simply — well, not so simply — purchases a “credit default swap,” which entitles it to a payoff if a specified company, G.M. for instance, goes into default or suffers a material downgrade in its credit rating. The party on the other side might be a hedge fund that is more sanguine on G.M.’s bonds or has a way (it thinks) to hedge that risk. Every financial firm uses some varieties of derivatives, which, again, are contracts that call for a payment (one way or other) depending on some underlying asset. Their growth has been explosive. Credit-default swaps, for instance, didn’t exist a decade ago; today there are $8 trillion of them. No one has any idea of the losses that could ensue from a panic; credit-default swaps “have never been stress-tested,” notes the analyst James Bianco.

Neither the Fed nor the S.E.C. has ever really clamped down on derivatives or insisted on a form of disclosure that would tell folks what is going on. So forget hedge funds; if you’re searching for the next financial storm, try derivatives. (Nothing much you can do about them, either.)

[This prescient piece was written by Roger Lowenstein. Credit default swaps had been mentioned once previously, in an article on financial troubles at Parmalat on December 20, 2003.]

From Past Installments of ‘The First Time News Was Fit To Print’…

U2

March 9, 1981

Irish U2, a Young Quartet, Plays at Ritz
The Irish rock quartet U2, which has received extravagant critical praise in the British press, made a strong showing at the Ritz on Saturday. For such an accomplished band, U2 is unusually young.

Ranging in age from 18 to 20, its members met three years ago at a Dublin secondary school. Yet their sound, and eclectic hard rock with a mystically romantic strain, makes them one of the most harmonically sophisticated rock bands to emerge in recent years.
* * * * *
Bono Hewson, U2’s lead singer, has a moderately strong voice that was partially drowned out at the Ritz. This was a shame, since the band’s material is of considerable interest. Most of the songs on its debut album, Boy are visionary reflections of adolescence….Where poetically ambitious rock bands tend to get mired in their visions, U2 brings to its purpose a healthy balance between energy and lyricism.

Alex Rodriguez

June 4, 1993

Draft Starts at Short, Then Stops on Mound
The [#1 overall draft] choice was Alex Rodriguez, a 17-year-old shortstop out of Westminster Christian High School in Miami … Roger Jongewaard, the Seattle Mariners’ vice president of scouting and player development, bucked the trend this year just as he did in 1987 when he made Ken Griffey Jr. the No. 1 selection instead of a highly touted pitcher, Mike Harkey. This time, Jongewaard bypassed highly touted Darren Dreifort, a right-handed pitcher scooped up by the Los Angeles Dodgers with the next pick.

Jongewaard acknowledged that Dreifort, a pitcher with Wichita State University, might advance to the majors at a faster clip.

Rodriguez, a two-sport standout who received more college scholarship offers for his quarterbacking skills than his baseball skills, now has decisions to make. He has already signed a letter of intent with the University of Miami and says he still might pursue both football and baseball in college rather than turning pro.

“It’s a great honor to be No. 1 in any job, whether it’s baseball, basketball or football,” Rodriguez said during a conference call. “I’m excited about the whole situation. I just hope it works out.”

Federal Express

January 29, 1975

Freight Forwarder Takes to Air
The fledgling Federal Express Corporation…isn’t advertising in New York, but is using TV and newspaper advertising in 27 other markets, the biggest of which is Chicago.

“The smaller our market, the bigger our share, and we think we can own places like Rochester,” said J. Vincent Fagan, one-time New York agency man who is now Federal’s senior vice president-marketing at its Memphis headquarters.
* * * * *
The two-phase campaign (tailor-made to each market) is aimed first at making consumers aware of Federal (”Kansas City, you’ve got a new airline.”) Then it attempts to convert users to Federal. The ad budget is about $1.2 million.

Federal, which was financed by $80-million in venture capital, is not yet making money, but, said Mr. Fagan, “we expect to make a lot of it.”

So much for dreams of glory.

White Collar Crime

December 28, 1939

Dr. Sutherland Says The Cost Of Duplicity In High Places Exceeds Burglary Losses
“White-collar criminality” was sharply attacked by the retiring president of the American Sociological Society, Dr. Edwin H. Sutherland of Indiana University, in an address tonight which discarded accepted conceptions and explanations of crime.

Speaking at a joint session of that society…Dr. Sutherland described present-day white collar criminals as “more suave and deceptive” than last century’s “robber barons” and asserted that “in many periods more important crime news may be found on the financial pages of newspapers than on the front pages.”

Woody Allen

March 19, 1962

Young Men’s Hebrew Association Presents 2nd Jazz Concert
On the bill were two well-established jazz groups…and a relatively unknown comedian, Woody Allen. It was the comedian who walked off with the honors for the evening.

Mr. Allen, who describes himself as “short and unloved,” looks like a somewhat unkempt Wally Cox. A monologuist in the Mort Sahl style who ranges over almost every area except politics…he wandered off into what he apparently found to be more diverting topics…[for example] the problem of getting a divorce in New York (”The Ten Commandments say ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ but New York State says you have to”).

Mr. Allen’s quiet, underplayed style enabled him to get laughs with what might otherwise have been little more than casual remarks.

See Also…

• Greatest Hits of 2007 (Walkman, Email, Jerry Seinfeld and more)
• Greatest Hits of 2008 (Princess Diana, Personal Computer, John McCain and more)
• See all the previous installments of The First Time News Was Fit To Print
• November 3, 2007: Appearance on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday

Want to play along at home? Get complete access to the New York Times archives by becoming an NYT subscriber.

Every now and again, I head into the online archives of The New York Times and dig up the first time the paper covered various topics. Here are 16 first mentions worth mentioning (again), from Princess Di to Archie Bunker, U2 to YouTube. If you’ve got a topic you’d like to see here, leave me a comment. Happy New Year!

Diana Spencer

December 15, 1980

For ‘Hounding’ a Friend of Charles, Press Is Chided
The latest round of feverish speculation about Prince Charles’s marriage prospects has touched off a new debate in Britain about the press and royal privacy.

Even Buckingham Palace, which normally says not a word about such things, has felt obliged to formally protest some of the recent speculation, and the mother of Lady Diana Spencer, the 19-year-old woman being mentioned as a possible royal bride, has indignantly accused the newspapers of printing lies and hounding her daughter.

“May I ask the editors of Fleet Street,” said Lady Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, in a letter published in The Times of London this month, “whether they consider it necessary or fair to harass my daughter daily, from dawn until well after dusk? Is it fair to ask any human being, regardless of circumstances, to be treated in this way?”
* * * * *
For weeks, her picture has been in the newspapers almost daily, accompanied by stories reporting such momentous news as the fact that she stalled her mini-car, a bright red Metro, in traffic and had trouble restarting it, or that she disclosed in an interview that she liked children, a trait that is presumably not unusual in a kindergarten teacher.

John McCain

July 31, 1967

Start of Tragedy: Pilot Hears a Blast As He Checks Plane
At 10:30am Saturday, Lieut. Comdr. John Sidney McCain 3d climbed aboard his A-4 Skyhawk for a mission over North Vietnam.

“I closed the canopy and started the plane and then went through the normal checks of the gauges and the settings,” the 30-year-old Navy pilot recalled today. “Suddenly I felt and heard an explosion. It was either my plane or the one to the right. Flames were everywhere.”

In the following moments aboard the aircraft carrier Forrestral, the 150-pound Annapolis graduate climbed out of the cockpit, stepped precariously onto the plane’s three-foot-long refueling pipe and then leaped onto the burning flight deck and ran.
* * * * *
The son and grandson of two noted admirals, Commander McCain has a disarming disregard for formal military speech or style. He is wiry, prematurely gray and does not take himself too seriously.

Keep reading for Yoko Ono, the personal computer, Mount Rushmore, Wayne Gretzky, Dave Matthews Band and more.

Yoko Ono

November 25, 1961

Far-Out Music Is Played at Carnegie
One thing you can surely say about today’s new music: the farther out it gets, the harder it is to describe. It wasn’t always so; thirty years ago inner anatomical detail and structural exactitude were the rage. But now –

Here are some of the things that happened in almost total darkness at Carnegie Recital Hall late yesterday afternoon, all in the name of music:

Against a taped background of mumbled words and wild laughter a girl spoke earnestly about peeling a grapefruit, squeezing lemons and counting the hairs on a dead child. Musicians in the corner made their instruments go squeep and squak.
* * * * *
The occasion was a concert of works by Yoko Ono, and the hall was packed. The works were titled, respectively, “A Grapefruit in the World of Park,” “Piece for Strawberries and Violin” and “AOS–To David Tudor.”

Whether or not time will prove Miss Ono a master of musical expressiveness, there can be no denying her skill at concocting titles. Especially since neither strawberries nor violin were anywhere in evidence.

[This was actually Yoko's second appearance. She was briefly mentioned the previous day in an article titled "Musical Notes."]

Mount Rushmore

July 10, 1927

Making a Monument out of a Black Hills Mountain
Out of the granite face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota within the next five years will appear in heroic proportions the features of four of our illustrious Presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. This memorial will be to the founding, extending and preserving the Union and to the completion of the dream of Columbus by the cutting of the Panama Canal, and the four Presidents represent these epochs in our history. The work is authorized by an act of Congress and is being planned by the State of South Dakota. Actual carvings of the figures will begin this Summer.

Personal Computer

November 3, 1962

Pocket Computer May Replace Shopping List
Pocket-size computers may eliminate the housewife’s weekly shopping list. Electronic communication would tell the store in advance what she needed. She would simply pick up the bundles.

This was envisioned today by Dr. John W. Mauchly, inventor of some of the original room-size computers [pictured], who has developed one the size of a suitcase and is now working on a pocket variety.
* * * * *
Dr. Mauchly also predicted the day when a headwaiter could accurately forecast the cocktail a person wanted merely by matching the drinker’s characteristics against preferences recorded in his own pocket computer….”There is no reason to suppose the average boy or girl cannot be a master of a personal computer,” he said.

Jon Stewart

November 4, 1988

Weekender Guide
Also performing are the stand-up comedians Bob Shaw, Ray Romano and Jon Stewart. The cover charge is $10 tonight, $12 tomorrow, and $7 on Sunday, and there is a two-drink minimum. Reservations are suggested.

Online Dating

August 26, 1999

You’ve Got Romance! Seeking Love On Line
More and more single people, used to finding everything else on the Internet, are using it to search for love. More than 2,500 Web sites for adults are now devoted to matchmaking, said Daniel Bender, founder of Cupid’s Network (www.cupidnet.com), an Internet portal for personals sites that went on line in 1995 listing only a handful.

At a time when many people are staying single longer, busy professionals barely have time to squeeze in workouts and rules about sexual misconduct pose barriers to romance in the workplace, the Internet can be a fast and efficient way for single people to find each other, the creators of these services say. Many singles say they post their ads on a lark, expecting little. They take advantage of free trial memberships, yet concede that despite their doubts, they wonder “what if.”

Superdelegates

December 22, 1983

A Not so Mad Race for Delegates on Capitol Hill
The selection of the first delegates to the 1984 Democratic Presidential convention will take place early next year not in the chill air of Iowa or New Hampshire, as has been the case for many years, but in the temperature-controlled back rooms of Capitol Hill.

Under new rules adopted last year by the Democratic Party, House Democrats will hold a caucus, probably in the first week of February, to choose 164 of their number as delegates to the party’s national nominating convention, where there will be a total of 3,933 delegates. The aim is to get more of the party’s top elected officials involved in the nominating process.
* * * * *
The party’s only black Presidential candidate, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, is expected to include this class of ‘’superdelegates” in a challenge to delegate selection rules.

Mr. Jackson, who contends that the rules are racially discriminatory, is expected to argue that setting aside a bloc of delegate slots for elected officials deprives blacks of a chance to compete for these positions. Party officials insist that Mr. Jackson does not have a legitimate issue because the overall delegation to the national convention will reflect the percentage of blacks and other minorities in the party.

U2

March 9, 1981

Irish U2, a Young Quartet, Plays at Ritz
The Irish rock quartet U2, which has received extravagant critical praise in the British press, made a strong showing at the Ritz on Saturday. For such an accomplished band, U2 is unusually young.

Ranging in age from 18 to 20, its members met three years ago at a Dublin secondary school. Yet their sound, and eclectic hard rock with a mystically romantic strain, makes them one of the most harmonically sophisticated rock bands to emerge in recent years.
* * * * *
Bono Hewson, U2’s lead singer, has a moderately strong voice that was partially drowned out at the Ritz. This was a shame, since the band’s material is of considerable interest. Most of the songs on its debut album, Boy are visionary reflections of adolescence….Where poetically ambitious rock bands tend to get mired in their visions, U2 brings to its purpose a healthy balance between energy and lyricism.

YouTube

October 27, 2005

Now Playing: Your Home Video
The entrepreneurs who have started companies like ClipShack, Vimeo, YouTube and Blip.tv are betting that as consumers discover the video abilities built into their cellphones and digital still cameras, and get better at editing the often-lengthy video from their camcorders, they will be eager to share video on the Web. While most of the services are free today, the entrepreneurs eventually hope to make money by selling ads or charging fees for premium levels of service.
* * *
None of the sites should be considered a reliable sole archive for personal video, however, since many do not allow users to download their original file once it has been uploaded. And there is always the possibility that a site may vanish overnight.

Archie Bunker

January 12, 1971

Are Racism and Bigotry Funny? CBS ‘Family’ Series May Shock Some
Tonight the Columbia Broadcasting System Television Network will find out if Americans think bigotry and racism, as the prime elements of a situation comedy, are funny.

Is it funny, for example, to have the pot-bellied, church-going, cigar-smoking son of Middle America, Archie Bunker, the hero of All in the Family, fill the screen with such epithets as “spic” and “spade” and “hebe” and “yid” and “polack”? Is it funny for him to refer to his son-in-law as “the laziest white man I ever seen”? Or to look at a televised football game and yell, “Look at that spook run…it’s in his blood”?

The answer, I say, is no. None of these is funny….They are not funny because they are there for their shock value, despite CBS’s protestations that what are being presented are “familiar stereotypes” with “a humorous spotlight on their prejudices…making them a source of laughter,” so “we can show how absurd they are.” What is lacking is taste.

Rocky

September 24, 1976

At the Movies
Not long ago, United Artists teased the public by placing ads in newspapers for a sneak preview of “a film that will open in December to qualify for the Academy Awards.” Moviegoers anticipating a star-studded extravaganza may have been taken aback when the credits flashed on Rocky, a film starring and written by Sylvester Stallone.

Sylvester Stallone himself may be taken aback if he is not proclaimed a star when the film opens, since stardom was his goal when he sat down to write the role of Rocky, an inarticulate, tender-hearted bum of a boxer who dominates virtually every scene of the drama….”It took about three and a half days to write Rocky,” said Mr. Stallone, an impressively muscled Italian-American decked out in a vivid shirt, jeans and boots. “I’m astounded by people who take 18 years to write something. That’s how long it took that guy to write Madame Bovary. And was that ever on a best-seller list? No. It was a lousy book and it made a lousy movie.”

Harry Truman

May 20, 1934

Missouri Political Leaders Have Already Selected Their Candidates [For Senate]
Tom J. Pendergast, head of the Kansas City machine, then turned to Harry S. Truman, presiding judge of the Jackson County Court. Truman accepted and the gage of battle was thrown down.

But within the past few days there has been a growing sentiment in favor of John J. Cochran, Representative from St. Louis. [Jacob L. "Tuck"] Milligan’s candidacy did not strike much fire. Truman is little known and his only strength is that given him by Pendergast in Kansas City.

Wayne Gretzky

July 6, 1978

Hockey Star, 17, Is Always Ahead of Himself
With mock fear he asked if it was safe to walk the streets of New York. The joke was that Wayne Gretzky, now 17 years old, has been thwarting assaults since he began outclassing the big boys as a 5-year-old all-star player on a hockey team for 11-year-olds.

Now the slight center is skipping three years of junior hockey to join the Indianapolis Racers of the World Hockey Association with a seven-year contract worth $1.75 million.

“All the way up everybody said I’d get killed,” Gretzky said yesterday of his accelerated ascent through the Canadian amateur system. “Now they say I’m gonna get killed next year in the pros. But I find as I go higher in the leagues, it’s tougher but less dirty. There’s more respect for each other.”
* * * * *
Gretzky proudly announced he had just received his driver’s license two weeks ago. His face fell flat when he was reminded he would have to apply for a United States license. “I get nervous at driving tests,” he said.

Dave Matthews Band

September 2, 1994

A Forum For 60’s-Style Jamming
Horde, a neat acronym for the clunky phrase Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere, was conceived of in 1992 by Blues Traveler, a New York-based band that continues to select most of the groups on the tour. Blues Traveler has performed in the festival every year. This time around, it was joined by the Dave Matthews Band, Cycomotogoat, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, the Screaming Cheetah Wheelies, Rusted Root and the Allman Brothers Band. Though most of these groups are glorified bar bands, playing an all-American fusion of blues and rock, an overwhelming majority of audience members seemed to be below drinking age.

The pacing was uncanny: literally seconds after a performance on one stage ended, a group on the other stage began. The day started on the main stage with the Dave Matthews Band, the most promising new group on the bill. It performed lively, introspective rock songs that had just the right amount of open spaces for improvisations and solos. Outside of Mr. Matthews’s gently emotional vocals, the high point was the violin playing of Boyd Tinsley, which moved nimbly from mock-classical background accompaniment to upbeat bluegrass. [Image courtesy of MusicMonthly.com.]

ESPN

July 22, 1979

Tomorrow—’A Video Supermarket’
An equally ambitious cable operation, due to begin in September, is the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN), based in Bristol, Conn. With the Getty Oil Company as its major backer, ESPN plans to become the nation’s first all-sports network, offering not only play-by-play coverage but also sports-related news and feature programs.

“Our goal is to provide a continuous ‘Wide World of Sports’ for the sincere sports fan,” explains ESPN’s president William F. Rasmussen, referring to the highly successful ABC series….During its premiere weekend, the network plans to carry four football games, two soccer games, the European Open Golf Tournament, the U.S. slow-pitch softball championship and highlights of the American Legion baseball playoffs.
* * * * *
A preview of ESPN’s schedule reveals another soap opera—called Teams—for sports fans. Such mimicking of the established networks, however, can only make cable networks more vulnerable to criticism and less the programming “alternative” they hope to be.

See Also…

• The First Time News Was Fit To Print: Best of 2007 (Walkman, Email, Barack Obama, Jerry Seinfeld and more)
• November 3, 2007: Appearance on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday

See all the previous installments of The First Time News Was Fit To Print.

Want to play along at home? Get complete access to the New York Times archives by becoming an NYT subscriber.

It’s time for another edition of The First Time News Was Fit To Print, where we head into the archives of The New York Times and find the first time the paper covered a particular subject. If you have a suggestion for a future installment, leave a comment. Here’s what we dug up this week:

General Motors

December 28, 1908

General Motors Co. Start Rumor Anew
The announcement last week of the formation, as a New Jersey corporation, of the General Motors Company, supposed to be the much-talked-of holding company which is to absorb all of the producers of low-priced cars in the automobile market, has created quite a flurry of interest. It is said that three-quarters of the stockholders of the Olds Motor Works at Lansing and a proportion of the Buick Motor Company of Flint, Mich., have already assented to a merger plan.
* * *
The basic idea behind the combination proposals has been the purchase of materials in quantities effecting a considerable saving in the cost of production, the distribution of the field so as to avoid competition in the production of cars of each given price, apportioning to each concern the type which it shall produce, and the limitation of it to that type.

Cellular Phones

May 26, 1982

Bell’s Cellular Radio Plans
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company informed the Federal Communications Commission today that it intends to stay in the new cellular radio business after its proposed divestiture of the 22 local telephone companies.

Cellular radio is a relatively new technology, developed over the past two decades by Bell Labs and others, that will provide an improved form of mobile and portable telephone service. The F.C.C. later this year will approve franchises to offer the new phone service in localities around the country … Local cellular phone service would be offered and maintained by the local phone companies as regulated businesses, according to present plans.
* * *
Unlike conventional mobile telephone systems, which have one large sending and receiving antenna, usually near the center of town, cellular systems have multiple antennas, with each serving one small geographic section or cell. As a vehicle moves through the city, its receiver obtains a signal from the closest antenna, handing off the customer from one cell to another as it moves through the streets.

Alternative Energy

April 1, 1963

Resources of U.S. Found Adequate for this Century
The United States will have enough natural resources for at least the rest of the century to meet the demands of an increasing population and a rising national economy, it was reported today. The nation, however, may face severe temporary and regional shortages of some resources, such as water and timber, and in the latter part of the century will probably be forced to turn to new sources for many raw materials.
* * *
Before the end of the century, it seems possible the country’s petroleum and natural gas resources “will be sufficiently depleted to bring into play an expanding flow of alternative energy sources.” The incipient resources problem of domestic oil and gas, however, will be greatly mitigated, if not offset, by the increasing contribution of nuclear energy, exploitation of the oil shales of the Colorado Plateau and the tar sands of northern Canada, possibly gasification of coal into a high-energy fuel long-range shipment of natural supplies of oil and gas known to exist in the Middle East and North Africa and probably in other parts of the world, thus far only sporadically explored.

The BCS

June 10, 1998

New System for Rating Top College Team
The latest attempt to guarantee a true college football national championship game was unveiled yesterday by the Bowl Championship Series, which concocted a complex formula of ratings that might have been devised by Stephen Hawking.
* * *
Despite taking six months to create the rating formula, which calls for measures like adjusted deviation of computer rankings and statistical weighting of opponents’ strengths of schedules, Roy Kramer, the Southeastern Conference commissioner and coordinator of the Bowl Championship Series, said it is not overly complex. “I don’t think it’s more complicated than figuring out how a football writer can choose between a No. 9 and a No. 4 team,” he said.

David Frost

January 5, 1963

British TV’s Claim to Superiority Over U.S. Variety: There’s Less of It
At 10:50 on Saturday evening BBC – the government supported station – concludes the week with a satiric revue entitled That Was the Week That Was, with David Frost in charge of the improprieties.
* * *
After staring at routine programs for eight days it is refreshing to find something as skittish as TWTWTW. The fact that it needles the government on a government station is interesting in itself. But anyone familiar with the satiric brilliance of the stage revue, Beyond the Fringe, knows that TWTWTW is mediocre stuff. Most of it is heavy-handed in an amateur style. Some of it does not get beyond insulting the guests of the program – the cheapest method of getting attention on both sides of the Atlantic.

The personal insult is no funnier in London that it is in New York. Nor is the general level of British TV higher.

From Previous Installments…

Donald Trump

January 28, 1973

A Builder Looks Back – And Moves Forward
The big change in Fred Trump’s operations in recent years is the advent of his son, Donald….Donald, who was graduated first in his class from the Wharton School of Finance of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, joined his father about five years ago. He has what his father calls “drive.” He also possesses, in his father’s judgment, business acumen. “Donald is the smartest person I know,” he remarked admirably. “Everything he touches turns to gold.”

Digital Watch

July 21, 1973

A Watch That Takes the Hard Time Out of Telling Time
Now there’s a new toy for the man with a collection of watches. The digital watch, which is operated by a sort of tiny computer, takes all the guess work out of time reading by flashing the hours and minutes in numerals on its face.
* * * * *
Sales are brisk although the Pulsar is not a thing of beauty compared to many good watches. The watch itself is thick, to accommodate its computer and battery, and weighs about four ounces with its metal strap. Until its “command” button is pressed, it shows nothing but a blank, dark-red face and looks like a dead television screen. But that, presumably, is the fun of owning one. Ask the Pulsar wearer what time it is, and without saying a word, he presses the button and you know it’s 9:42.

Andrew Sullivan

April 20, 1983

Weinberger Drops Debate At Oxford
Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger has withdrawn from a debate on foreign policy at Oxford University after a warning from his British counterpart that his participation “might not be advisable” because of the approach of a general election.

Andrew Sullivan, president of the Oxford Union, which had hoped to stage the debate on May 27, said Mr. Weinberger telephoned last Friday to say he could not take part. The American had agreed some time ago to oppose E.P. Thompson, the leader of the British nuclear disarmament movement, on the motion: ”There is no moral difference between the world policies of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.”
* * * * *
Mr. Sullivan, the union president, is a 19-year-old student of history and French who describes himself as a supporter of the Government. He reported that Mr. Weinberger said on Friday that he thought a debate might be an “inappropriate” forum for a person in his position and that he did not want to seem to intervene in the British domestic political process with an election in the offing.

Update: Mr. Sullivan responds.

Sesame Street

May 7, 1969

Rich TV Program Seeks Youngest
The most expensive and expansive television show ever beamed at the nation’s 12 million preschool children — who will watch TV more hours before they get to kingergarten than they will spend in six grades of elementary school — was announced yesterday by National Educational Television.

Sesame Street is named to reflect the balance between fantasy and the real-life educational open-a-new-window need of pre-school youngsters – particularly members of minority groups in the inner cores of big cities – that the show hopes to achieve.
* * * * *
David Connell, executive producer of the series (he held the same position with the Captain Kangaroo series for eight years), said the new show would follow an informal magazine format, with either three or four permanent hosts yet to be selected. At least one of the hosts will be black.

Pat Sajak

May 8, 1986

As ‘Wheel’ Goes, So Go TV Profits and Careers
Television executives offer various explanations for the wild success of Wheel of Fortune, which gave no particular hint of its extravagant future when it first appeared, seemingly just another word-game show, on NBC’s daytime schedule 11 years ago. On the show, contestants win prizes for discerning a hidden phrase by guessing its letters.Some suggest the secret is in the droll humor of the show’s host, Pat Sajak, a former television weatherman, or perhaps in the fetching manner in which the hostess, Vanna White, reveals the hidden clues. Roger King, chairman of King Productions, the distributor, maintains it is in the game – simplicity itself. “It can be played by a rocket scientist and by an 8-year-old,” he said.

It is generally conceded that ”Wheel,” entering its fourth year in syndication, can’t go on as it has forever. But most industry observers maintain that while the show may be nearing its peak, its impact remains huge.

See Also…

• Greatest Hits (Walkman, Email, Jerry Seinfeld and more)
• November 3, 2007: Appearance on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday

See all the previous installments of The First Time News Was Fit To Print.

Want to play along at home? Get complete access to the New York Times archives by becoming an NYT subscriber.

It’s time for another edition of The First Time News Was Fit To Print, where we head into the archives of The New York Times and find the first time the paper covered a particular subject. If you have a suggestion for a future installment, leave a comment. Here’s what we dug up this week:

Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade

November 26, 1924

Santa to Lead a Parade: Will Be Accompanied by Toyland Notables
Santa Claus, accompanied by several bands and a circus contingent made up of professionals and employees of R.H. Macy & Co., will parade six miles through the city Thanksgiving morning.
* * *
Santa, with his retinue of clowns, and prominent personages in toyland, such as Mother Goose, Little Red Riding Hood, Little Miss Muffet and the Three Men in the Tub, then will be escorted to the ground floor [of Macy's], where he will be crowned. Thereupon he will unveil Macy’s Christmas spectacle, “Fairyfolk Frolics in Wondertown.”

Jimmy Buffett

June 18, 1973

Andy Pratt Is Heard At Max’s Kansas City
Andy Pratt came in from New England to Max’s Kansas City, Park Avenue South, on Wednesday with a strong reputation as singer-songwriter. The unknown-genius-of-the-week spot is always a rough one, but by the end of Pratt’s first set that reputation of his had taken some bruising.
* * *
By contrast, the imagery of the country singer (and writer) Jimmy Buffett was clear and clean, rooted firmly in Buffett’s own existence. Buffett, who was backed up by a good harmonica player and a low-phosphate washboard scrubber, also dropped in some humor. Buffett looks outside and takes notes—Pratt takes the inner view and long way around.

Keep reading for Trivial Pursuit, Kwanzaa, the Dustbuster and more.

Trivial Pursuit

January 17, 1983

The Newest Game in Town
Will Trivial Pursuit beat Pac-Man? Can an old-fashioned board game compete with the marvels of electronic games? Selchow & Righter, who gave the world Scrabble, think so. And with a certain amount of cause. Trivial Pursuit is a runaway best seller in Canada, where it was introduced last May. So far, 100,000 games have been sold there, in a market where sales of 10,000 would be considered successful. And the 4,000 or so games that have trickled into the United States in the last couple of months have been selling as fast as stores can stock them. Brentano’s sold out its original order of 400 and, in New York, F.A.O. Schwarz sold all its 200 games.

The stores attribute the game’s popularity to the fact that it is geared to adults, who have been somewhat overlooked in the video game craze of the last two years.

Dustbuster

February 7, 1979

Toolmaker Introduces a Vacuum
Black & Decker, well known to the handy man as the world’s largest maker of power tools, is setting its sights on women consumers for the first time in its 68 years. It is introducing the first product from its new household products division—the Dustbuster—with its biggest introductory promotion budget ever.

The product, on which the curtain was raised at a press breakfast here yesterday, is a cordless, hand-held vacuum cleaner with suggested retail price of $29.95. It is not supposed to take the place of the regular vacuum, but rather augment it with the “little messes,” as the advertising agency will characterize them.

Kwanzaa

December 30, 1983

The Evening Hours
The event is the first citywide celebration of Kwanzaa, a seven-day holiday that pays tribute to the cultural roots of Americans of African ancestry. Locally, this is the fifth year the New York Urban Coalition has celebrated Kwanzaa; nationwide the holiday has been celebrated since 1966. According to its originator, Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga, although the holiday has some historical roots in Africa, it is ”nonpolitical, nonreligious, nonheroic.”

On Tuesday night at the Club Serene in Brooklyn, Mayor Koch proclaimed Kwanzaa Week in New York. Then he told the crowd of about 400 that he had practiced his Swahili in order to pronounce correctly such exotic-sounding words as kujichagulia (self-determination), ujamaa (cooperative economics) and imani (faith), the theme of Kwanzaa ‘83.

”Did I do it good?” he asked. The crowd applauded encouragingly.

[Note: This was actually the third time Kwanzaa appeared in The Times. But the first two—both in December of 1982—weren't very memorable.]

YouTube

October 27, 2005

Now Playing: Your Home Video
The entrepreneurs who have started companies like ClipShack, Vimeo, YouTube and Blip.tv are betting that as consumers discover the video abilities built into their cellphones and digital still cameras, and get better at editing the often-lengthy video from their camcorders, they will be eager to share video on the Web. While most of the services are free today, the entrepreneurs eventually hope to make money by selling ads or charging fees for premium levels of service.
* * *
None of the sites should be considered a reliable sole archive for personal video, however, since many do not allow users to download their original file once it has been uploaded. And there is always the possibility that a site may vanish overnight.

Campaign Finance Reform

September 24, 1970

Senate Approves Curbs on Political TV Spending
The Senate, over token Republican opposition, completed Congressional action today on legislation designed to restrict the growing political cost of campaign advertising on television and radio.

The legislation, regarded by many in Congress as the most significant campaign finance reform since the Corrupt Pratices Act was passed 45 years ago, was approved by a 60-to-19 vote.
* * *
Based on the number of votes cast in the 1968 Presidential election, it was believed that the bill would limit each major party to less than $6-million in broadcast spending for its Presidential ticket in 1972. Two years ago, the Republicans spent more than $12-million for radio and TV advertising to elect Mr. Nixon, while the Democrats spent $7.1-million in their unsuccessful effort to elect former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.

From Previous Installments…

• The Presidential Candidates (Obama, Clinton, McCain, Huckabee, Paul, Bloomberg)
• Greatest Hits (Walkman, Email, Jerry Seinfeld, Donald Trump and more)
• November 3, 2007: Appearance on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday

See all the previous installments of The First Time News Was Fit To Print.

Want to play along at home? Get complete access to the New York Times archives by becoming an NYT subscriber.