We spent the summer of 2001 searching for Chandra Levy, mourning Mr. Belvedere, and pardoning Microsoft. But on the second Tuesday of September, a mere twenty months after widespread wisecracks about the world ending on Y2K, it felt like the world did. I’ve been reading through the online archives of The New York Times from September 11, 2001, to see what was in the news the morning of the attacks. Today’s edition of ‘The First Time News Was Fit To Print’ looks at some of the headlines:

1. Taliban Suicide Bombers Target Deposed Afghan Leaders

“If the would-be assassins were indeed Arabs, as the United Front asserted, the fact would lend credibility to those who contend that foreigners, including Osama bin Laden, are playing an ever bigger decision-making role among the Taliban.”

2. Washington: Rumsfeld Attacks Bureaucracy

“Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that he was declaring war on bureaucracy in the Pentagon and that he wanted to combine some civilian and military staffs, cut duplication in the military services and shift some jobs to the private sector.”

3. Senator Joe Biden attacks President Bush on Missile Defense (more…)

Senator Obama is likely to name his running mate this week, possibly as early as tomorrow morning. So we went back into the archives of The New York Times to see the initial reaction to past VP announcements. Here’s how the press covered the nominations of Vice Presidents Roosevelt, Cheney, Gore, Quayle, Bush, Agnew, Johnson and Nixon.

George Bush—Ronald Reagan’s VP

July 18, 1980

Conservatives First Recoil,
Then Line Up Behind Bush
Finally, after 16 years, the conservatives thought they had put it all together. From the outset, this had been their convention. They had spent the time, the money and the energy, and they had elected their delegates. They had fashioned a platform and drafted rules that made few concessions to the party’s moderates.

But shortly after midnight last night, things changed. By a single stroke, the party’s Northeast Republican establishment was resurrected, placed on the national ticket by the man on whom they had pinned their hopes. Worse yet, from their point of view, a future party leader was annointed who was a member of the Trilateral Commission, a supporter of the Federal equal rights amendment and an opponent of a constitutional ban on abortions.
* * * * *
“Governor Reagan sounded like Winston Churchill, but behaved like Neville Chamberlain,” said Howard Phillips, executive director of the American Conservative Union….[But] there were indications that pragmatic politics had led conservatives to join ranks behind Mr. Bush.

“It’s a winning ticket,” added representative Eldon Rudd, a conservative from Arizona.

Lyndon Johnson—John Kennedy’s VP

(more…)

Every so often, we dig up the first time The New York Times covered various subjects. (Just in case you were curious.) This week’s installment looks at Venus & Serena Williams, U2, A-Rod and more—plus a few first mentions we’ve already mentioned, including John McCain, Barack Obama and Friends.

Venus & Serena Williams

July 3, 1990

Status: Undefeated. Future: Rosy. Age: 10
Venus Williams, who lives in Compton, turned 10 on June 17. She is ranked No. 1 in the girls’ 10-and-under in Southern California, and will move to the 14-and-under division later this month. She already has some of the sport’s most respected names talking in superlatives since she beat the legendary Dorothy Cheney in a recent tournament that matched young phenomenons against former champions in their 60’s and 70’s.
* * * * *
The success of the 5-foot-3-inch Williams is not surprising to her father, Richard, a 6-2 1/2 former basketball player who said she was also unbeaten in age-group track meets.

“The most games Venus has lost in a set is two or three,” he said in a recent interview. Asked why he had encouraged his five children to pursue tennis, he replied, “I was so flabbergasted at the amount of money paid out to professional players that Mrs. Williams and I thought the best thing we could do for our children is to give them the ability to play tennis.”
* * * * *
“I practice Venus and her 8-year-old sister Serena out at East Compton Park,” Mr. Williams said. “It’s a radical neighborhood. A lot of dope is sold. Somewhere around 70 percent black and the rest Hispanic. The gangs look out for Venus, and they come and talk to her about the mistakes they’ve made.

“We play on two courts—that’s all there is—and they look like trash, they’re so slippery. But we will stay here until Venus and Serena want to leave. They want to be able to be No. 1 in the world in the women’s game and say they came from the worst neighborhood.”

Keep reading for online dating, Federal Express and more…
(more…)

Let’s go back into the archives of The New York Times to find the first time the paper covered various topics. This edition features early critical disdain for Archie Bunker, the first story about Sirhan Sirhan and a few Tim Russert mentions.

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.

(more…)

Every Monday, we travel into the archives of The New York Times to find the first time the paper covered various topics. This edition features the humble origins of ESPN, early praise of Dave Matthews, and more.

Hummer

March 27, 1983

Military to Replace Jeep With Bigger Vehicle
The jeep, the military’s workhorse of World War II, is about to be replaced. Its successor, to be called a Hummer, will be a larger vehicle designed to keep pace with today’s modern military. As is typical with the military, the name of the new vehicle is derived from the initials that spell out what it is designed to be: a high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle.
* * * * *
The Hummer, five times bigger than a jeep, which was developed in the 1930’s, may play a bigger role than its predecessor because it is designed to replace other vehicles and trucks in the fleet that are also aging fast. One Hummer will replace two jeeps and a trailer carrying antitank missiles.

Keep reading for ESPN, Dave Matthews, Secretariat, Grey’s Anatomy and Gray’s Anatomy…
(more…)

Every Monday, we travel into the archives of The New York Times to find the first time the paper covered various topics. This edition features Jenna Bush trick-or-treating with her grandfather on Air Force Two and Steven Spielberg admitting he didn’t give 100% on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Jenna Bush

November 2, 1988

Unmasking Bush Reveals, Well, Bush
For those who believe that Mr. Bush would offer more offbeat moments as President than Mr. Dukakis, there was fresh evidence on Halloween.

Flying home Monday night from a rally in Kansas City, the Vice President turned Air Force Two into a flying Haunted House, with a darkened cabin and spooky, wind-blown music. As Secret Service agents hovered, his twin granddaughters, Jenna and Barbara, trick-or-treated through the plane in costume, one as a Juicy Fruit chewing gum pack and the other dressed as a Juicy Fruit pack vampire. Aides sported Michael Dukakis masks.

And in what had to be one of the most surreal moments of the 1988 race, Mr. Bush appeared, wearing a windbreaker with “George Bush” embroidered on it, and a George Bush mask with wild, carrot-colored hair. He became annoyed when his fellow travelers remarked that the mask looked more like one of Charlton Heston than of the Vice President.

Keep reading for Indiana Jones, Mariah Carey, O.J. Mayo, Superdelegates and Playboy magazine …
(more…)

Every Monday, we travel into the archives of The New York Times to find the first time the paper covered various topics. This edition looks at the Popemobile, Splenda, Hamas and more.

Popemobile

October 1, 1979

Pope Prays at Irish Shrine; Will Fly to the U.S. Today
Twice today the Pope [John Paul II], who is to arrive in the United States tomorrow, delivered homilies that reflected his conservative views of theology and Christian morality. Twice he repeated his appeal, made yesterday at Drogheda, for the end of violence in Northern Ireland. Twice he drove through cheering multitudes in the high, partly open special vehicle that the Irish press has inevitably christened the Popemobile. [Image courtesy of Motor Trend.]

Keep reading for UFC, Splenda, Bill Parcells, Hamas and Joan Rivers.
(more…)

Every Monday, we travel into the archives of The New York Times to find the first time the paper covered various topics. This edition looks at the World Wide Web, the Segway, Michael Stipe and more.

World Wide Web

February 28, 1993

A Web of Networks, an Abundance of Services
Bill Clinton and Al Gore made a campaign promise to help build a national data network, hoping it would lead to new digital information services. While waiting to see if the new Administration follows through, businesses can get a taste of the future with the rapidly growing commercial networks of computer services.
* * * * *
Cheryl Currid, a business consultant in Houston, said she had begun using Radiomail, a Menlo Park, Calif., company that provides two-way mobile electronic mail over the Internet. Since she signed up, her cellular phone bill has dropped sharply.

“I’m an electronic mail addict,” she said. “People can find me wherever I am. I have negotiated several business deals recently without even using a telephone.”
* * * * *
Additionally, gateways exist so that WAIS users can retrieve information from non-WAIS data bases like Gopher, developed by university users of Next computers, and the World Wide Web, which makes available physicists’ research from many locations.

Keep reading for Michael Stipe, the Segway, and more…
(more…)

Every Monday, we travel into the archives of The New York Times to find the first time the paper covered various topics. This edition looks at Princess Diana, Yo-Yo Ma, Chuck Klosterman, Nelson Mandela, The Simpsons and more.

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.

Yo-Yo Ma

November 19, 1962

Spectacle on Closed-Circuit TV to Herald Cultural Center Drive
One of the most ambitious closed-circuit television shows to be produced will open a $30,000,000 fund-raising campaign on November 29 for the National Cultural Center in Washington.
* * * * *
Called “An American Pageant of the Arts” and conceived a year ago by Roger L. Stevens, the center’s chairman, the show will have a cast of 100, including President and Mrs. Kennedy, former President and Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Leonard Bernstein (as master of ceremonies), Pablo Casals, Marian Anderson, Van Cliburn, Robert Frost, Fredric March, Benny Goodman, Bob Newhart and a 7-year-old Chinese cellist named Yo-Yo Ma, who was brought to the program’s attention by Casals.

Keep reading for Chuck Klosterman, Jeff Bezos, Nelson Mandela, Marty McFly and more.
(more…)

Most of us know Mike Wallace from his long career on 60 Minutes, the Sunday-night staple of American TV. But long before 60 Minutes, Wallace established himself on his eponymous The Mike Wallace Interview, a long-form interview show that started in 1957.

Wallace donated recordings of some early Interview programs to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, and now the interviews and transcripts are available online. Watching the interviews, you’re transported back forty years to a time when TV shows started with over-the-top Philip Morris cigarette ads. Wallace himself introduces the program by saying:

WALLACE: Good evening. What you’re about to witness is an unrehearsed, uncensored interview. My name is Mike Wallace. The cigarette is Philip Morris.

ANNOUNCER: New Philip Morris, probably the best natural smoke you ever tasted, presents: THE MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEW.

Aside from the cigarette ads, the show is actually really interesting — there are lots of interesting guests, and Wallace is a personable but tough interviewer.

Notable interviews include: Steve Allen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Margaret Sanger, Kirk Douglas (fresh from Paths of Glory!), Eleanor Roosevelt, Pearl Buck, Salvadore Dali, Aldous Huxley, and on and on. Go get your interview on!