The 2003 Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing
From Rochester Institute of Technology
School of Print Media
Presented to
Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr.
Sponsored By Xerox
THE TWENTY-FOURTH
Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing
Sponsored by The Xerox Corporation
Presented to
ARTHUR O. SULZBERGER JR.
Presented at
On Demand Digital Printing & Publishing
Strategy Conference and Exposition
New York, New York
April 7, 2003
School of Print Media
College of Imaging Arts & Sciences
ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK
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Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
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Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
ARTHUR O. SULZBERGER JR.
Chairman and Publisher
The New York Times Company
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rthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. was named chairman of The New York
Times Company on October 16, 1997. As the Company’s senior executive, he is responsible for its long-term business strategy. Mr. Sulzberger,
who became publisher of The New York Times in 1992, continues to run
the Company’s flagship enterprise on a day-to-day basis. Over the past
decade, he has shaped and implemented innovative print, broadcast and
online initiatives that are enabling the Company to compete successfully in
the 21st century global media marketplace. These include:
• Pursuing the national expansion of The Times, with 18 new print
sites
• Creating the new six-section color newspaper
• Entering the Knowledge Age with the launch of the NYT
Electronic Media Company, which includes The Times’s
NYTimes.com—the No.1 newspaper-owned Web site in the
world
• Establishing new enterprises such as The New York Times
Learning Network, Upfront magazine, NYT-Television and the
Continuous News operations
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• Acquiring the International Herald Tribune
• Purchasing 50% ownership of the Discovery Civilization Channel
• Becoming a minority partner in New England Sports Ventures,
which includes the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park and 80% of the
New England Sports Network
During Mr. Sulzberger’s tenure as publisher, The Times has earned
25 Pulitzer Prizes and provided its readers with innumerable examples of
momentous journalism such as its breakthrough “How Race is Lived in
America” series, its historic new millennium edition, and its internationally acclaimed coverage of the September 11 terrorist attack in a “A Nation
Challenged” and “Portraits of Grief.”
It should also be noted that The New York Times Company has been
repeatedly cited for its commitment to excellence, innovation and social
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responsibility. In Fortune magazine’s 2002 annual survey of “America’s
Most Admired Companies,” The New York Times was listed as No. 1 in its
industry, receiving the top ranking in all eight categories. The company also
ranked No. 1 among all 530 companies surveyed in social responsibility and
the quality of its products.
Before coming to The Times, Mr. Sulzberger was a reporter with The
Raleigh (N.C.) Times from 1974 to 1976, and a correspondent in London
for The Associated Press from 1976 to 1978. He joined The Times in 1978
as a correspondent in its Washington bureau. He moved to New York as a
metro reporter in 1981 and was appointed assistant metro editor later that
year.
From 1983 until 1987, he worked in a variety of business departments,
including production and corporate planning. In January 1987, he was
named assistant publisher and, a year later, deputy publisher, overseeing
the news and business departments. In both capacities, he was involved in
planning The Times’s automated color printing and distribution facilities
in Edison, N.J., and at College Point in Queens, N.Y., as well as the creation
of the six-section color newspaper.
Mr. Sulzberger played a central role in the development of the Times
Square Business Improvement District, officially launched in January 1992,
serving as the first chairman of that civic organization. He also helped
found, and served as a past chairman, of the New York City Outward Bound
Center. He was also a member of the North Carolina Outward Bound board
of directors.
Mr. Sulzberger earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science
from Tufts University in 1974. He is also a 1985 graduate of the Harvard
Business School’s Program for Management Development.
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Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
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A young Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in the New York Times newsroom. (Photo courtesy of The
New York Times Company Archives)
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The Times Building’s Pulitzer hall. The New York Times has received 88 Pulitzer Prizes
more than any other news organization. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times Company
Archives)
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Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
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A portrait of the founder of the modern New York Times with his grandson and
great grandson. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times Company Archives)
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Checking election returns in the 1950’s. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times Company
Archives)
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Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
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The Times Tower with it’s news zipper in the 1950’s. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times
Company Archives)
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PROGRAM
GREETINGS
Bob Krakoff
Chairman & CEO, Advanstar Communications, Inc.
John Mancini
President, AIIM International
Charlie Pesko
President, CAP Ventures, Inc.
INTRODUCTION
Dr. Joan Stone
Dean, College of Imaging Arts and Sciences
Rochester Institute of Technology
WELCOME
Ursula M. Burns
President, Business Group Operations
Xerox Corporation
VIDEO
PRESENTATION OF AWARD
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Professor Barbara Pellow
Administrative Chair, School of Print Media
College of Imaging Arts and Sciences
Rochester Institute of Technology
Ursula M. Burns
President, Business Group Operations
Xerox Corporation
ACCEPTANCE OF AWARD
AND REMARKS
Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr.
Chairman and Publisher
The New York Times Company
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Program
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An early newsroom in Times Square. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times Company Archives)
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A Times delivery truck from the 1920’s. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times Company
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Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing
The New York Times at 150
NY Public Library Speech
by Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
presented at New York Public Library
New York, New York
January 10, 2002
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ood evening and thank you. It is a pleasure to finally be here. Let me
begin by apologizing to anyone inconvenienced by the unavoidable
postponement of this engagement in September. As you can imagine, for
all of us at The New York Times, the attack on September 11 demanded
our complete attention and focus. To meet the needs of our millions of
readers, who desperately wanted to know everything they could about this
absolutely terrifying and hopefully, once-in-a-lifetime story, we immediately fell back on a simple journalistic strategy: bring in plenty of food;
forget about your personal life; work around the clock. Simple but I hope
effective.
As we begin 2002, our lives have become a lot less frantic. Our country
and its coalition partners have achieved a major victory in our war against
terrorism in Afghanistan; the anthrax threat seems to have dissipated (or
at least gone back underground) and we no longer shudder every time we
hear the sound of an airplane overhead. We are again worrying about more
prosaic concerns—like the state of the national economy, or the economy
of Argentina, or the economy of New York City.
The theme of this evening—The New York Times at 150—has not
changed. But since September 11, most of us see history though a somewhat different prism and our point of view has shifted a bit. How could it
not? For me, recent events have brought back into focus the extraordinary
power of newspapers to forge a sense of community and to help people
under siege.
But sit back for a moment and let me see if I can give you an overview
of a century and half of The New York Times in 150 seconds, more or less.
Who says we can’t be brief?
A century and a half. And in all that time, I believe that The New
York Times has never fulfilled its mission more successfully than it is doing today. Over the past four months, with sacrifice, teamwork, and selfless
cooperation, the newspaper I so proudly lead has magnificently covered
the attack on America and our nation’s war against terrorism.
The Times has reestablished what it means to be the newspaper of re-
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cord. Our “Nation Challenged” section served as both a source of breaking
news and a textbook to our new world. And “Portraits of Grief” reminded
all of us that those who died were individuals—people just like ourselves.
At The Times, our first reaction to the attack on September 11 was the
same as yours—shock and horror. We immediately tried to call those loved
ones who worked in downtown Manhattan or for one of the fire, police or
emergency medical service units that had rushed to Ground Zero.
Our next instinct was to go to work and serve our journalistic mission.
We knew that the most effective way we could help our nation was by doing
our absolute best to report the news and keep people informed.
While others fled downtown, we tried to get there or at least to Times
Square. One individual actually persuaded a yacht owner from Jersey City
to ferry him across the Hudson in an inflatable dinghy. Our journalistic goal
was straightforward. It was, as one individual put it, to make “the unimaginable understandable.”
By far, the most remarkable response to our coverage came from Rupert Murdoch, who recently said of The Times: “In this crisis, they have
just…done a fantastically good job.” When I read this, it immediately
brought to mind a passage from the Book of Isaiah: “And the wolf shall also
dwell with the lamb.” We’re the lamb.
While we provided our readers with full coverage of the war against
terrorism, we also became directly involved in the relief effort. Just 24 hours
after the assault, The New York Times Company Foundation established
a 9/11 Neediest Fund to provide money for victims and their families. The
appeal has raised more than $50 million, a truly impressive achievement.
So how do the journalistic accomplishments of the past few years fit
into the history of this newspaper—one which has become as much of an
institution as The New York Public Library?
Well, it begins with people just like you.
Now this comment may seem a little presumptuous since I haven’t
had the pleasure of actually meeting most of you. But I would go out on a
limb and bet that you’ve been reading us since you successfully climbed
out of your playpens. Why else would you take so much time out of your
busy schedules and listen to some stodgy publisher drone on about the past
glories of his ancient newspaper.
In fact, our market research has uncovered, somewhat surprisingly, that
a good percentage of our readers would rather come to this lecture than take
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a white water rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, ski in Utah or ride
in a hot air balloon across Southern France. No accounting for taste. Or
maybe no one wants to get on an airplane.
In truth, we greatly appreciate the dedication of our readers and explicitly recognize that it is rooted in The Times’s dedication to a set of
underlying principles and premises that have guided us generation after
generation.
By creating and sustaining a strong philosophical foundation, we have
made it much easier for our newspaper and our Company to achieve their
long-term journalistic and business objectives.
The Times first appeared on September 18, 1851. When you look
back at that year, it is apparent that bold ambitions and grand visions
were in the air. The birth of The Times coincided with the opening of
the Great Exhibition in London, Sojourner Truth’s legendary “Ain’t I a
Woman” speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, and
the exploration by U.S. Navy captain William Lewis Herndon of 4,000
miles of the Amazon.
These were events that appealed to the imagination of a public mesmerized by the prospect of the imminent and dramatic change that was
being brought about by Industrial Age innovations.
New York City and Brooklyn, which did not become a borough of our
great metropolis until 1898, were fully caught up in the excitement and
promise of this new era. Every day, thousands of people arrived on our
streets, farmers from New Hampshire, immigrants from famine-ravished
Ireland, escaped slaves from the Deep South and political exiles from the
failed revolutions of 1848, all looking for opportunity and a new way of life.
Clearly, 1851 was a great year to start a new publishing venture. As
Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace noted in their Pulitzer Prize-winning
book, “Gotham:”
In the 1840s and 1850s Manhattan became the nation’s information center, a fountain from which news and novels,
stock quotes and lithographs flowed in ceaseless profusion.
A mountain of printed matter, generated by a growing army
of publishers and printshops, was delivered by rail. But
the data was also dispatched, almost magically, through an
expanding latticework of wires, itself the progeny of New
York’s scientific and commercial cultures.
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The Times’s founders—Henry Raymond and George Jones believed that the only way for The New-York Daily Times, as it was then
called, to distinguish itself was to establish a solid reputation for trustworthy news. In their original four-page paper, Raymond and Jones laid
out a set of guiding principles in an editorial entitled, “A Word about
Ourselves,” they declared:
Upon all topics,—Political, Social, Moral and Religious—
we intend that the paper shall speak for itself. We shall
be Conservative where we think Conservatism essential
to the public good; and be Radical in everything, which
may seem to us to require radical treatment, and radical
reform. What is good we desire to preserve and improve;
what is evil, to exterminate or reform.
Admittedly, that last sentence was a little over the top, but being a
publisher in New York City has never been easy.
In 1896, Adolph Ochs, a young businessman from Chattanooga and
my great-grandfather, purchased The New York Times. By then, the
original management was gone, profits were nonexistent and there was
a real question of whether the paper was going to make it into the 20th
century.
Part of the problem was that the newspaper had endorsed the
Democratic candidate for president, Grover Cleveland, in 1884 and its
Republican advertisers left in droves. Our advertisers are now relatively
indifferent to who occupies the White House; unfortunately so too are
many voters. Perhaps the post-September 11 mindset will help generate
a new interest in the political process.
Despite all these obstacles, Mr. Ochs—like Raymond and Jones—
believed that he had a winning formula for appealing to the increasingly
sophisticated New York City readers. Within a few days of the consummation of that sale, he sat in his room at the Madison Avenue Hotel and
drafted a set of principles that would guide the newspaper for over a
century:
It will be my earnest aim, he wrote, that The New York
Times give the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form, in language that is parliamentary in good society
to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interest involved.
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These statements from Raymond, Jones and Ochs were, in their time,
a radical departure from the common journalistic ethic. They established a
covenant with their readers; a sacred bond of trust that would become part
and parcel of all that we strive to do. They also set a high standard—one
not always reached, to be sure. In their way, they demanded more from the
reader—a commitment to an honest dialogue and debate, not merely a reaffirmation of one’s current political views.
One of the earliest defining moments of The New York Times was
in 1871 when it exposed Tammany Hall, a group of incredibly corrupt
New York City politicians who tried to steal everything that wasn’t nailed
down—and a few things that were. The city’s bosses even offered a five
million dollar bribe to quash the stories—an amazing amount of money in
those days.
Decade after decade, The Times has continued to shine a bright light
on all forms of governmental misbehavior. When Senator McCarthy was
finally discredited during the televised Army hearings of 1954, Senator
James Eastland of Mississippi, the chairman of the Internal Security Subcommittee, tried to keep this issue alive by claiming that Communists had
infiltrated the newspaper industry.
But Eastland wasn’t just interested in following in the footsteps of McCarthy. By subpoenaing thirty current or former Times employees, he was
attempting to force the newspaper to back off from its strong editorial position that Mississippi adhere to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark
case that required schools to end their separate, but equal polices. Eastland
theorized that if The Times could be intimidated into taking a less aggressive stand on civil rights, other newspapers and wire services would soon
follow its lead.
On January 5, 1956, The Times published an editorial, written by-then
editorial page editor, Charles Merz. Let me read just one paragraph:
And our faith is strong that long after Senator Eastland and
his present subcommittee are gone, long after segregation
has lost its final battle in the South, long after all that was
known as McCarthyism is a dim, unwelcome memory, long
after the last Congressional committee has learned that it
cannot tamper successfully with a free press, The New York
Times will be speaking for (those) who make it, and only for
(those) who make it, and speaking, without fear or favor, the
truth as it sees it.
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The first New York Times offices (1851). (Photo courtesy of The New York Times Company Archives)
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The New York Times front page announcing the death of President Roosevelt (1945).
(Photo courtesy of The New York Times Company Archives)
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I must admit that I get goose bumps every time I read this declaration.
The editorial was reprinted in its entirety by newspapers throughout the
country and the Eastland committee slipped into a well-deserved oblivion.
About 15 years later, Neil Sheehan, a correspondent in our Washington
bureau, was given a copy of a 47-volume, top-secret study of the Vietnam
War. These documents exposed a decision-making process that led our
country into one of its worst foreign policy fiascoes and, one can only hope,
provide future generations with a “how-not-to” manual for avoiding such
disasters.
While publicly revealing The Pentagon Papers—as they would become
known—had profound consequences, I doubt that anyone fully understood
the extent of the leap that we were about to take into the journalistic and
legal void.
Punch Sulzberger, my father and the publisher of The Times during
that period, once recalled both the pride and apprehension he felt as the
decision to publicize these extraordinary documents was being made.
Our brilliant editor, Abe Rosenthal, laid out the newsroom’s plans for
him, complete with an off-site news and composing room to maintain secrecy.
“The more I listened,” my father recalled, “the more certain I became
that the entire operation smelled of 20 to life.”
Even so, he gave the go ahead to publish what may have been the most
controversial leak in the 20th century and, as a result, transformed the relationship between the news media and the government.
None of you are probably too shocked that my narrative has been replete with upbeat and inspiring anecdotes. It is our anniversary. But we’ve
also made a few wrong turns along the way. Consider the fact that The
Times:
• Declared the paintings of Degas to be repulsive.
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• Ridiculed the physics of Robert Goddard, the father of rocketry.
• Panned Joseph Heller’s novel, “Catch 22.”
• Called Senator Thomas Eagleton “a casting director’s ideal for a
running mate.”
• And, in a fit of complete madness, announced in a 1911 edition
of our Sunday Magazine section that the Martians had actually
built two canals on their planet—in record time.
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More importantly, and all too seriously, we terribly regret that we did
not fully publicize the full horrors perpetrated by Adolph Hitler and his
wretched Third Reich. While we did print reports about the insidious
policies that eventually lead to such unimaginable atrocities as Dachau,
Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, we did not do nearly enough to protect the
European Jews from the coming Holocaust.
As Max Frankel, a former executive editor of The Times, wrote in an
essay that was published last November: “Why, then, were the terrifying
tales almost hidden in the back pages? Like most—though not all—American media, and most of official Washington, The Times drowned its reports
about the fate of Jews in the flood of wartime news. Its neglect was far from
unique and its reach was not then fully national, but as the premier American source of wartime news, it surely influenced the judgment of other
news purveyors. No single explanation seems to suffice for what was surely
the century’s bitterest journalistic failure.”
The Times is an imperfect institution. But despite our errors of judgment, past, present and future, I look back at our journalistic record with
enormous pride and gratitude, as a testament to the thousands of fallible
Times men and women who have struggled, year-in-and-year out, to adhere to the highest standards of our profession.
Almost from the day I began my career as a journalist in 1974 as a young
reporter at a small afternoon daily in Raleigh, North Carolina, I have been
hearing about the death knell of newspapers.
More than a century ago, well before my great grandfather bought The
New York Times, one of the legendary newspaper editors in New York
thought he saw the end of newspapers approaching. James Gordon Bennett, the editor of the New York Herald, had built his reputation in large
part by getting the news first. But all of a sudden a disturbing new technology had appeared on the scene.
“The telegraph may not affect magazine literature,” he said, “but the
mere newspaper must submit to destiny and go out of business.”
Seemingly with every generation, a new information platform emerges—radio, television, cable, now the Internet—and the smart money once
again predicts a radical shakeout in the media marketplace.
In 1980, Ted Turner—the creator of CNN—warned that newspapers
would be gone in ten years. A decade later, Mr. Turner acknowledged that
he had to eat a lot of crow for that statement.
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The New York Times building today. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times Company Archives)
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An enlargement of the Pulitzer Prize Medal, which the Times first won in 1918, for
public service. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times Company Archives)
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More recently, I heard that a Microsoft VP was using a video presentation predicting that The Times will stop printing its paper in 2018.
He reportedly told a group of newsprint executives, “I see dead people
everywhere.”
We have a powerful future in the world of interactive media, to be
sure. But newspapers, a business that been around since the beginning of
the 17th century, are not going away anytime soon.
In a recent study conducted by Yankelovich Partners, Americans
rated newspapers, Oreo cookies, CNN and shopping malls, as the number one, two, three and four top items they would like to see continued
throughout the 21st century. For the record, they rated telemarketers,
cloning, Jerry Springer and professional wrestling as the four top things
they would like to see disappear.
Yet, we will not tie all our fortunes to print or to any other medium.
To ensure that The Times will eventually celebrate its 200th anniversary,
we intend to become the leading content provider for those consumers
and businesses on the edge of what we are calling the knowledge economy. This audience is beginning to understand what we already know:
information isn’t knowledge. Indeed, information isn’t power. Only
knowledge is power.
As my daughter Annie said recently:
“Information is knowing Madonna’s phone number. Knowledge is
knowing when to call.”
While I don’t think we’ll get to that level of “granularity” with our
readers, this shift from the Information Age to the Knowledge Age plays
to our strengths. It ensures that our brand of knowledge-rich journalism
will be more valuable than ever in the global media marketplace.
In The Making of the President 1972, Theodore White observed:
“It is assumed that any telephone call made between nine and noon
anywhere in the executive belt between Boston and Washington is made
between two parties both of whom have already read The New York
Times and are speaking from the same shared body of information.”
While he didn’t use the language of modern marketing experts, what
he was writing about was a form of audience loyalty. In the thirty years
that have passed, that audience has grown and we have grown with it.
At The New York Times, we understand that the digital world has
magnified our interconnectedness in dramatic ways, some of which we
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can see today and others of which we can’t. But the core of what we were
in 1972, what we are today and what we will be a decade hence, is our relevance to this quality, knowledge audience.
We are committed to achieving our ever-expanding audience vision
and reaching the tens of millions of individuals identified as potential customers—in print, through the Internet, via television, books and radio.
We have spent a lot of time and effort to learn what we can about this
audience. What we found out is that they have an innate curiosity about
the world around them—about ideas as well as events—at the national,
international and local level. This curiosity is rooted in the high value they
place on education and the acquisition of knowledge, and is driven by a
sense that what happens in the world affects them.
So how do we reach this quality audience—in print, digitally and increasingly, in broadcast? How do we grow The Times in this new century
of ours?
We are now in the midst of a long-term strategy based on the premise that our Company has to make the transition from a product-oriented
organization, with its single minded-focus on the fine art of slathering ink
on dead trees—on newspapers and newspaper customers—to one with a
broader understanding of our core competencies: providing quality journalism through a variety of channels to an audience that needs and expects
such information.
We are guided by a simple thought. The Times has a potential audience of tens of millions of people throughout the country—countless more
worldwide—and we can no longer afford to care how we reach them.
Whether it is the printed pages of the paper or the digital realm of the
Internet, in magazines or books, on television or radio, we have become
single-minded in our efforts to reach this knowledge-hungry audience—regardless of the means of distribution.
To achieve this bold goal of building our audience across multiple
media platforms in 1999, we created a new ten-year plan that was based on
four elements:
• The print expansion of The New York Times newspaper;
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• The continued global build-out of NYTimes.com, our flag
ship Web site;
• Brand extension, which covers a wide range of services and
products;
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• And television, which while part of brand extension, is so important and so challenging that we think about it separately.
Our national expansion initiative continues to be one of cornerstones
of our long-term, coast-to-coast strategy. We currently offer home delivery
in 207 markets and The New York Times is available in 37,000 retail outlets outside of the greater metropolitan area. In case anyone here plans on
moving, we will find you as we continue to add new print sites around the
country.
Our investment in our Web-based future—just like our investment in
our newsprint based future—is a large and ongoing one. We have learned
that, while each medium offers different challenges and opportunities, we
cannot succeed in one area alone. Our future depends on our growing in
both.
What we also know is that people are spending more time online and
using the Web to find out about a wide array of topics. The audience for
news and information sites has increased almost 65% between October
2000 and October 2001 according to Jupiter Media Metrix.
NYTimes.com has aggressively competed for its share of this growing
online audience and now has ten million individual active users. We average nearly a million active visitors every weekday, almost the equivalent of
our print circulation.
Moreover, we had more than 5.4 million international users visit the
site in September. Let it also be known that 165 members of the British
parliament have registered for our site, about 20% of that body… we think
most of them are in the House of Lords.
In this new century, we are pursuing the brand extension component
of our audience vision even more aggressively. Our news service and syndicate, books, Times Digest, branded pages and photo archives are all an
integral part of our effort to reach audiences here at home and internationally.
Implementing our long-range vision also requires that we become
more familiar with television. At some point in the not-too-distant future,
achieving critical mass on the Internet will depend, to a large degree, on our
ability to marry the printed word with the moving image. Creating a framework that enables us to bridge our analog and digital properties promises to
be an enormous challenge—one well worthy of our abilities.
As the pipeline gets bigger and the flow of digital information moves
faster, customers will be demanding the state-of-the-art news and informa-
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tion they want, when they want it. Either we give it to them in the form
they desire, whatever it might be, or someone else will.
We believe that we are well positioned for this next technological leap
forward and that the landscape is already shifting in our favor. Success in
the broadcast realm no longer requires that we attempt to speak to the largest audience possible. Instead, as a result of the Internet, of the continuing
proliferation of cable and of the new wireless technologies, we are seeing
that niche strategies are replacing the traditional mass-market approach of
television.
In this decade, quality content will become more and more important.
In a convergence world, you can take the viewer and reader as far and as
deep as he or she wants to go. That plays to our strengths. Increasingly,
outlets need what we, almost uniquely, can supply. This is a demand we are
preparing to meet.
From a business perspective, we believe we need television to achieve
our full financial potential. Journalistically speaking, we feel that we can
play a positive role in reshaping how quality news and information is prepared and presented in this medium.
As we contemplate our future, we must be agnostic about the method
of distribution we use; print, broadcast and digital all provide extremely
exciting opportunities and challenges. Our long-term strategy for the 21st
century media marketplace is designed to use every available platform and
technology to speak to our ever-expanding audience.
Yet, at the end of the day, this strategy only works if we continue to be
guided by The New York Times Company’s Core Purpose, which is: “To
enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high quality news,
information and entertainment.”
As long as we consistently meet the demand for trustworthy, original
information; for a respected and trusted voice; and for someone to set a
common agenda for decision-makers in a wide variety of fields, not the least
of which is democracy, we will make our way through the technological
jungle.
When I was getting ready for this speech, I read the seventy-fifth anniversary edition of The New York Times. At one point, it suggested that
The New York Times of 2001 “will have great miracles to record—perhaps
a dispatch from Mars” (we do seem to have an odd institutional fascination
with that planet). Now that we have moved past that date, which always
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seemed in the very distant future, I regret that this prediction turned out
to be a fantasy, but the real miracle is that we have grown and prospered
from the very beginning of the modern era to now.
Of course, the true secret to our success is in our closely adhering to
the basic principles originally established by our visionary founders. We
owe a great debt to Henry Raymond, George Jones and Adolph Ochs.
Our 150th anniversary is a tribute to their commitment to the highest ideals of journalism.
I also want to express once again my gratitude to you, our readers.
Over the decades, your unfailing support and your tireless dedication
have inspired us to produce a newspaper that could meet your incredibly
high expectations.
In the years ahead, we will work even harder to earn your loyalty. If
anyone here still has any doubts about our ability to make the changes
that will be necessary to compete effectively in this new environment, I
would refer them to an essay that was written by The Times’s architecture
critic, Herbert Muschamp. In a document given to the four architectural
teams competing to win the design contract for our new headquarters, he
wrote of us:
The Times is not just another media organization. Its cultural peers are those institutions that took shape in the intellectual climate of the 18th century Enlightenment: the
modern university, the research laboratory and the encyclopedic museum of art or science. Like these institutions,
the paper is governed by Enlightenment ideals of reason,
truthfulness, independence, integrity and inquiry.
That’s an extraordinary assessment. Let me add one more element
to it. And like these centuries-old institutions, we will continue to grow
and endure.
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NY Public Library Speech
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The front page of The New York Times from the day following the September 11 attacks.
(Photo courtesy of The New York Times Company Archives)
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Past Recipients
1979 RONALD A. WHITE
President, Graphic Systems Division, Rockwell International
1980 ROBERT G. MARBUT
President and CEO, Hart-Hanks Communications, Inc.
1981 ALLEN H. NEUHARTH
Chairman and President, Gannett Company, Inc.
1982 EDWARD W. ESTLOW
President, The E. W. Scripps Company
1983 KATHARINE GRAHAM
President, Washington Post Company
1984 ARTHUR OCHS SULZBERGER
Chairman and CEO, New York Times Company
1985 OTIS CHANDLER
Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Times Mirror Company
1986 ALVAH H. CHAPMAN JR.
Chairman and CEO, Knight-Ridder Newspaper, Inc.
1987 STANTON R. COOK
President and CEO, Tribune Company
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1988 WARREN H. PHILLIPS
Chairman and CEO, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
1990 FRANK A. BENNACK JR.
President and CEO, The Hearst Corporation
1991 JAMES C. KENNEDY
Chairman and CEO, Cox Enterprises, Inc.
1992 ROBERT F. ERBURU
Chairman and CEO, Times-Mirror Company
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1993 CHARLES T. BRUMBACK
Chairman and CEO, Tribune Company
Past Recipients
1994 JOHN J. CURLEY
Chairman, President and CEO, Gannett Company, Inc.
1995 LAWRENCE A. LESER
Chairman and CEO, The E. W. Scripps Company
1996 FRANK BATTEN
Chairman of the Board, Landmark Communications, Inc.
1997 P. ANTHONY RIDDER
Chairman and CEO, Knight-Ridder, Inc.
1998 DONA VIOLET A BARRIOS de CHAMORRO
Sra. Expresidenta de Nicaragua
1999 GARY B. PRUITT
President and CEO, The McClatchy Company
2000 WILLIAM BURLEIGH
Chairman, The E.W. Scripps Company
2001 JOHN W. SEYBOLD
Founder and President, ROCAPPI
2002 TIM O’REILLY
Founder and President, O’Reilly and Associates
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Isaiah Thomas was one of America’s great
patriot printers; he was born in Boston in 1749,
and apprenticed to a local printer at the tender
age of six. It was immediately apparent that he
was no ordinary apprentice, as young Isaiah
learned his alphabet and his type case at the
same time. He made many improvements in
the quality of his master’s printing and at the
age of 14 began traveling along the eastern
seaboard. Thomas returned to Boston in the
spring of 1770 and began publication of his
newspaper, The Massachusetts Spy. He became
involved with radicals such as John Hancock,
Thomas Young and Joseph Greenleaf, and
the Spy became the mouthpiece for the Sons
of Liberty. In April of 1775, Thomas was one
of Paul Revere’s riders. During the war years,
Thomas moved his printshop to Worcester in
order to continue printing for Hancock and the
Provincial Congress. He continued in Worcester after the Revolutionary War, establishing
himself as perhaps one of the most important
publishers in the country. He certainly was the
most innovative, enjoying great commercial
success. Thomas had always used the best
types and papers available, importing great quantities of types from the foundries of
Caslon, Fry and Wilson. Thomas’s Type Specimen Book of 1775, the folio Bible of 170l and
his History of Printing in America of 1810 are but three of his great achievements in printing.
In 1812, Isaiah Thomas founded the American Antiquarian Society and his generous contributions over the years established the society as his greatest monument. Isaiah Thomas
died in Worcester, Massachusetts on April 4, 1831.
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About Isaiah Thomas
Specimen of Isaiah Thomas’s Printing Types
(1785)
Thomas issued the first American type specimen, printed in Worcester in 1785 entitled
Specimen of Isaiah Thomas’s Printing Types.
“Being as large and complete an ASSORTMENT,” he claimed, “as to be met with in
any one Printing-Office in AMERICA.”
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Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. Contributions
Implemented the first six-section color edition of The New York Times newspaper.
Expanded The Times, nationally, with 18 new print sites.
Added the NYT Electronic Media Company (now New York Times Digital), which
includes The Times’ NYTimes.com—the No.1 newspaper Web site in the world.
Started-up new enterprises such as The New York Times Learning Network,
Upfront magazine, NYT-Television and Continuous News operations.
Acquired the International Herald Tribune.
Purchased of 50% ownership of the Discovery Civilization Channel.
Invested as a minority partner in New England Sports Ventures, which includes the
Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park and 80% of the New England Sports Network
(NESN).
Managed The Times during a period in which it earned 25 Pulitzer Prizes and provided its readers with innumerable examples of momentous journalism such as its
breakthrough “How Race is Lived in America” series, its historic new millennium
edition, and its internationally acclaimed coverage of the September 11 terrorist
attack in a “A Nation Challenged” and “Portraits of Grief.”
Led The New York Times Company to achieve a reputation for its commitment to
excellence, innovation and social responsibility. In Fortune magazine’s 2002 annual
survey of “America’s Most Admired Companies,” The New York Times was listed
as No. 1 in its industry, receiving the top ranking in all eight categories. The
Company also ranked No. 1 among all 530 companies surveyed in social responsi
bility and the quality of its products.
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Played a central role in the development of the Times Square Business Improvement
District, officially launched in January 1992, serving as the first chairman of that
civic organization.
Helped found, and served as a past chairman, of the New York City Outward Bound
Center. He was also a member of the North Carolina Outward Bound board of
directors.
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Isaiah Thomas Firsts
Contributions and Firsts
First printer in Worcester, Massachusetts (May 1775)
Printed first eyewitness accounts of the battles of Lexington and Concord (Massachusetts
Spy, May 3, 1775)
First postmaster in Worcester (May 1775)
Conducted the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in New England
(Worcester, 1776)
Issued first American type specimen (A Specimen of Isaiah Thomas’ Printing Types, 1785)
Printed and published the first edition of Mother Goose in America (1786)
First master of the Morning Star Masonic Lodge in Worcester (1793)
Established the first paper mill in Worcester (1793)
Printed and published the first American novel (William Hill Brown’s The Power of
Sympathy, 1789)
Was one of the founders of the first bank in Worcester (1804)
Wrote the first history of printing in America (The History of Printing in America, 2 vols.,
1810)
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Founded the first national historical organization in the United States (American Antiquarian Society, 1812)
First person in Worcester to own a coach and livery
Sponsored the first theatrical performance in Worcester
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Isaiah Thomas:
Patriot Printer
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I
Isaiah Thomas: Patriot Printer
saiah Thomas was the foremost printer of the generation that came of
age during the American Revolution. He rose from a poor childhood
to become one of the richest men in the new nation. During the height
of his career, his business empire stretched from Massachusetts to Maryland, and included newspapers, paper mills, printing shops, binderies,
and bookstores. His shrewd business acumen, his dynamic personality,
and his commitment to success guaranteed a legacy that remains strong
and thriving into the twenty-first century. The American Antiquarian
Society, which Thomas founded in 1812, perpetuates his belief in the
importance of the printed word and recognizes the power contained in
the early written records and ephemera of our nation.
Isaiah Thomas was born on January 19, 1749. While Isaiah was
still a young boy, his father deserted the family and fled to the southern
colonies where he is presumed to have died while seeking his fortune.
Facing destitute circumstances with four children to raise, Thomas’s
mother was forced to place him under the care of the overseers of the
poor in Boston. This welfare organization arranged for Isaiah to enter
into an apprenticeship with Zechariah Fowle, who owned a small printing shop in the city. Although the terms of the indenture stated that
Fowle was responsible for Isaiah’s education, Fowle lacked the ability
and resources to adequately educate his apprentice. Isaiah was forced to
learn to read and write by studying an “Ink stained Bible and Dictionary” in the pressroom and by setting type. Isaiah was very bright and
despite these hardships he soon outshone his master in both printing
and business.
At the age of sixteen, Isaiah illegally left his apprenticeship and
set out for London, where he hoped to gain a more thorough knowledge of the printing business. He failed to reach his desired location and
instead landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1765. He stayed in Halifax
seven months, finding employment in the only printing shop in town,
owned by Anthony Henry. During his stay in Halifax, he rigorously
opposed the British Stamp Act by printing the tax stamp upside down,
creating a woodcut of the devil poking at the stamp, and cutting all
stamps off of his printing paper. This spirited opposition to the Stamp
Act attracted the attention of the local authorities and within seven
months he was forced to flee the province.
After returning briefly to Fowle’s printing shop in Boston, he
again set off for London, this time choosing a more southern route, via
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Wilmington, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina, where he
settled for three years to work with a printer named Robert Wells. Thomas
met his first wife, Mary Dill, while in South Carolina and the two were
married on December 25, 1769. Thomas and his wife returned to Boston
in the spring of 1770. Once in Boston, Thomas entered into a partnership
with his old master, Fowle, and established a newspaper for the middling
class entitled the Massachusetts Spy. Thomas’s venture proved so successful that he soon purchased the business from Fowle, including the printing
press that Thomas had learned his craft on, called “Old Number One,” a
press that was to remain with him throughout his life.
Expanding his business in Boston Thomas experimented with other
forms of publishing, including almanacs and magazines. He was aware of
the colonists’ thirst for knowledge and of their dependency on Great Britain
to provide a constant supply of materials that would quench such appetites.
He envisioned a printing business that would be totally self-sufficient, one
that would rely on printers like himself to bring uniquely American products to a rapidly expanding American market.
In the meantime, the Massachusetts Spy soon became one of
the most successful newspapers in America, with a circulation of 3,500.
Thomas’s paper became a voice of the Whig, or Patriot, cause, containing
the most fervent anti-British rhetoric of all of the colonial papers. Postriders and ships carried the newspaper throughout the thirteen colonies,
allowing Americans exposure to the growing dissatisfaction with what the
Whigs interpreted as the mother country’s increased exploitation of power.
Thomas fueled the discontent by also printing pamphlets and other materials of an inflammatory nature.
In the spring of 1775, Thomas’s associates, including John Hancock
and Joseph Warren, feared for both his safety and that of his printing shop.
Thomas reported several troubling incidents involving the British authorities in his diary, including: “Indictment for a Libel against Government,”
“I am ordered before the Governor (of the province) and Council,” and
“Conduct of some British Officers to me respecting a piece I had published
of a Court Marital.” Perhaps the most disturbing references were those
to threats of bodily harm such as the following: “Affair at Northcarolina
(sic)—my Newspaper burnt there by the Common hangman—town meeting—Letter addressed to me—I am there hung and burnt in effigy,” “and
conduct of a british Regiment who paraded with a countryman they had
tarred and feathered…the regiment halted before my house played the
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Isaiah Thomas: Patriot Printer
rogue’s march and threatened I should be the next so served.”
Thomas hastily made plans to relocate his enterprise in Worcester, a
town forty miles to the west of Boston. Under the cover of darkness on April
16, 1775, Thomas packed up his press and moved it out of Boston to Worcester. Once in Worcester, he set up his printing press in the basement of Whig
supporter Timothy Bigelow’s house. Three days later the battles of Lexington and Concord occurred and the American Revolution began. The May 3,
1775, issue of the Spy, the first item printed in Worcester, contained one of
the first eyewitness accounts of these battles. During this time Thomas also
printed a document containing depositions taken from colonists in Lexington and Concord supporting the reports of atrocities allegedly committed by
British troops on April 19, 1775. Entitled A Narrative of the Excursion and
Ravages of the King’s Troops, Thomas noted that this was in fact the first
book to be printed in Worcester.
During the early years of the American Revolution Thomas lived
intermittently in Worcester and leased the daily operation of the Spy to first
Power of Sympathy: or the Triumph of Nature
Founded in Truth (Boston, 1789)
Thomas printed and published the first
American novel The Power of Sympathy, by
William Hill Brown, in 1789.
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William Stearns and Daniel Bigelow and then to Anthony Haswell. All of
these gentlemen proved to be poor printers and journalists and the Spy suffered in both quality and subscriptions under their tutelage.
In July 1778 Thomas resumed control of the Spy. From this point
on Thomas would remain in Worcester and in control of the Spy and an
increasing number of other publications and books. Throughout the rest of
the war years his business would fluctuate widely, but after the war it grew
exponentially, reaching its greatest successes in the years 1790 to 1802. In
order to insure the quality of all aspects of the printing process, Thomas
set up a paper mill and bookbinding operation. He had controlling interests
in three newspapers, a magazine, and eight bookstores in Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, New York, and Maryland. At the height of his business,
he operated numerous presses throughout the nation and employed some
150 people in Worcester alone.
As his business prospered Thomas became a very wealthy man. He
purchased a great deal of property in and around Worcester and built a mansion in the town. He also purchased a stately home in Boston and continued to travel back and forth between the two towns when business or pleasure called. He enjoyed showing off his wealth and was the first person in
Worcester to own a coach, which he often used in his travels throughout
New England.
Like many of the founding fathers, Thomas was also extremely
civic-minded. He was an active participant in the Masonic Order and served
as the first Master of the Morning Star Lodge in Worcester. He was the first
postmaster in Worcester, appointed to that post in May of 1775. As transportation flourished in the new nation Thomas was instrumental in surveying
and establishing turnpikes and canals in the area, recognizing the importance of an improved infrastructure to the growth and development of the
young nation. He was also a founder and trustee of the first bank in Worcester. He also enjoyed the theatre, sponsoring the first theatrical performance
in Worcester, and was an original proprietor of the Boston Anthnaeum.
Throughout his life and in his numerous wills, he was very generous
to friends, family members, and those less fortunate. Upon his death he left
bequests to so many learned societies, charitable institutions, and printers’
societies that this portion of his will was printed and circulated as a broadside, a fitting means of notifying the recipients of the benevolent printer’s
generosity. He had a reputation for being kind and generous to his servants,
seeking to provide them with the means to better their station in life, as he
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Isaiah Thomas: Patriot Printer
had so successfully accomplished for himself. Thomas’s house was always
open to family members as well as business associates, the atmosphere
made hospitable by the master of the house and his many servants.
Thomas’s personal life reveals a more complicated tale. He was married three times. His first marriage to Mary Dill ended in divorce in 1777,
following her affair and subsequent elopement with a British officer. However, the marriage did produce two children, a son named Isaiah and a
daughter, Mary Ann. Both of the children grew to adulthood and produced
many grandchildren. Isaiah attempted to follow his father in the printing
business but met with little success and died from injuries suffered in a
fall at age 45. Mary Ann was a wild and free-spirited woman who married
three times and divorced twice. She and her children were almost always
dependent on Thomas for financial support and he provided for their needs
generously if grudgingly.
Thomas married his second wife, again named Mary, in 1778. This
was a happy union and they lived together until her death at the age of
68. After her death, Thomas wrote in his diary, “I have buried my best
friend and wife, with whom I had lived for 40 years.” In 1819 Thomas took
Rebecca Armstrong as his third wife. She was a cousin and companion of
his second wife but proved to be an unsuitable match for him. The couple
separated after two years of marriage. Thomas devoted his later years to
his scholarship and philanthropy, retiring to the more pleasant company of
friends and books.
Thomas retired from active business pursuits in 1802 to write The
History of Printing in America. This two-volume work was first published
in 1810 and is still considered an important source on early American printers and the publishing industry. After publishing the History of Printing
Thomas determined that he should make available for study all of the
materials that he had utilized in his research by establishing a learned society based on the models of European institutions that had been in existence for hundreds of years. Specifically, Thomas envisioned an institution
would organize materials for study in a methodical manner while striving
to focus on the documents that would tell the story of the early American
nation.
In 1812, he founded the American Antiquarian Society as a learned
society and library devoted to American history and culture. It was the third
oldest historical society in the country but the first to be truly national in its
scope. In Thomas’s words, “The American Antiquarian Society is, in some
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respects, different from all other societies established in the United States.
Membership is restricted to no state, or party. There are no members
merely honorary, but all have an equal interest and concern in its affairs and
the objects of this institution, whatever part of the United States they may
reside in. It is truly a national institution. It has no local views nor private
concerns. Its objects (to collect and preserve) embrace all time, past present
and future….The benefits resulting…will be increased by time and will be
chiefly received by a remote posterity.”
Thomas was vain, highly intelligent, charming, quick tempered, and
philanthropic. His generosity extended beyond his material wealth. He was
genuinely interested in all kinds of intellectual pursuits as is exemplified
by the diverse subjects that he printed in both his newspapers and in his
books. In addition to being a prodigious maker of books, he was also a great
collector and scholar. He amassed an enormous collection of books, pam-
The Royal American Magazine (Boston, 1774)
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The Royal American Magazine was a monthly subscription publication, issued by Thomas to compete
with the British magazines that appealed to a more
literary segment of the population. In a brilliant
marketing move, Thomas decided to include
installments of Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts
in each issue. According to Thomas’s biographer
Clifford Shipton, the installments were printed
separately so that they “could be extracted from
the successive numbers of the magazine and bound
up together. The subscribers would obtain the history and the magazine for less than the regular price
of the history alone.” In addition to Hutchinson’s
history the magazine contained articles on science,
“true confessions” and love stories, and engravings by Paul Revere and Joseph Callender. The
magazine was also the first of its kind in America to
publish both the words and music to popular songs.
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Isaiah Thomas: Patriot Printer
phlets, broadsides, almanacs, newspapers, and ephemera during this lifetime of collecting. He truly loved the act of accumulating printed materials
and believed that such collections would be of tremendous value to future
scholars and historians.
Almost two hundred years after the founding of the American Antiquarian Society, the mission of the institution remains true to Thomas’s
vision. In this first year of the 21st century, the AAS remains a center for
scholarly research, a place where the history of this great nation, a nation
that Thomas helped mold, is still diligently preserved and studied.
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The American Antiquarian Society, located in
Isaiah Thomas
Award
in Publishing
Worcester,
Massachusetts,
is both an independent
research library and a learned society whose mission is to collect, preserve, and make available the
printed record of what is now the United States
from 1640 through 1876. Founded in 1812 by Revolutionary War patriot and printer Isaiah Thomas,
the American Antiquarian Society is the third oldest
historical society in the United States and the first
to be national in the scope of its collections.
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The American Antiquarian Society
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American Antiquarian Society
The American Antiquarian Society
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) is both a learned society and a
major independent research library. Founded in 1812 by the Revolutionary
War patriot and printer Isaiah Thomas, the Society is the third oldest historical organization in the United States and the first to be national in the
scope of its collections. Membership in the Society is by election and is limited to 700. Thirteen U. S. presidents as well as such luminaries as Daniel
Webster, Henry Clay, Alexander Graham Bell, Ken Burns, Jimmy Carter,
David McCullough, Walter Cronkite, and Daniel Boorstin have been, or are
currently, AAS members. Collectively, AAS members have won 61 Pulitzer
prizes.
The AAS library houses the largest and most accessible collection of
books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, sheet music, and
graphic arts material printed through 1876 in what is now the United States,
as well as manuscripts and a substantial collection of secondary works, bibliographies, and other reference works related to all aspects of American
history and culture before the twentieth century. The library contains 20
miles of shelves that hold over three million items including two out of every
three books, pamphlets, and broadsides known to have been printed in this
country from the establishment of the first press in 1639 through 1820. The
library’s unparalleled graphic arts materials include engravings, lithographs,
sheet music, and maps. In addition, the library owns useful collections of
microform materials including: Early American Imprints (1639-1819), Early
American Newspapers (1690-1820), American city directories through 1860,
the Adams Papers, and reference copies of various manuscript collections of
the Society. The Society’s holdings also include selected modern secondary
works and a full array of bibliographical tools, learned journals, and other
aids to research, as well as a collection of sound recordings and tapes of early
American music to supplement its holdings of printed music.
Scholarship
The exceptional depth of the library’s collections within the fields of
American history and culture through 1876, and the accessibility of those
collections through various finding aids, as well as a highly skilled staff,
make the library a perfect place for in-depth scholarly research. The Society conducts an extensive fellowship program for scholars, artists, and writers studying pre-twentieth-century America. Residencies of one month to
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one year enable scholars, advanced graduate students, and others to spend
an uninterrupted block of time doing research in the AAS library. Over 358
fellows from 41 states and nine foreign countries have been appointed since
AAS began awarding fellowships in 1972-73.
Support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provide the funding for the Society’s long-term postdoctoral awards. A portion of the Mellon grant allows a
recent PhD. recipient to spend a year at AAS revising his or her dissertation
for publication. This Mellon grant also provides funds for other general
long-term fellowships and for a distinguished scholar to spend an academic
year at AAS as Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence.
In addition, numerous short-term fellowships are also available to
postdoctoral scholars, Ph.D. candidates, and foreign nationals. In 1994 the
Society added visiting fellowships for creative and performing artists and
writers. Approximately 20 separate short-term fellowships are awarded
each year.
The writings produced from these fellowships have made substantial
contributions to scholarship. Many have been honored by the prestigious
prizes of the academic world and recognized by their peers as seminal
works in their fields. The 1999 Bancroft Prize was won by Jill Lepore
(Peterson Fellowship 1993-94) for The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the
Origins of American Identity. The 1996 Pulitzer Prize in History and the 1996
Bancroft Prize were awarded to Alan Taylor (AAS-National Endowment for
the Humanities Fellowship 1989-90) for William Cooper’s Town: Power and
Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic.
Work done at the Society over the years has contributed greatly to
the present understanding of the course of American history and culture
from the first contacts between European colonists and Native Americans
until the end of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Research carried out here includes work by such well-known historians and authors of
the past as Esther Forbes, Allan Nevins, Samuel Eliot Morison and David
McCullough and, more recently, by persons conveying historical information through new media, like the documentary filmmakers Ken Burns, who
researched several of his projects at AAS, and Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, who
adapted Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale for the screen.
A key factor in the extraordinary usefulness of the collections has been
the fact that the Society has, from the beginning, consciously set out to collect
the commonplace and ordinary pieces of printing, not just the first editions
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American Antiquarian Society
B
The American Antiquarian Society library houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, sheet music and graphic arts
materials printed through 1876 in what is now the United States, as well as manuscripts
and a substantial collection of secondary works, bibliographies, and other reference works
related to all aspects of American history and culture before the twentieth century.
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Isaiah Thomas’s printing press
known as “Old No. 1” (after restoration)
Isaiah learned the trade of printing in Zechariah Fowle’s small
shop in Boston. The press he
learned on was noted in later
documents as old “No. 1.” The
press was over six feet tall,
approximately three feet wide,
and six feet in length. The supporting timbers were of elm with
pieces of oak and chestnut also
used in its construction. The
platen was mahogany and all
of the hardware iron. Although
the press was large and heavy, it
had to be braced to the ceiling
of the print shop to prevent the
machine from “walking” across
the floor while in use.
written by canonized authors. For this reason, the collections has been very
conducive to the trends in the last generation or two toward intellectual and
social history; the history of Native Americans, African Americans, women,
and children; the historical context of past literary production; and all manner
of interdisciplinary pursuits, including American studies and the history of
the book.
The Society’s historic interest in collecting, recording, and interpreting
the output of American printing presses since early colonial days has made it a
center for research on the history of the book. In 1983 the Society established
its Program in the History of the Book in American Culture. This education
and research program involves a number of scholarly activities including a series
of annual lectures, workshops and seminars, conferences, publications and
residential fellowships all centered around the history and bibliography of the
printing, publication, and dissemination of books and other printed materials in
the geographical areas that became the United States and Canada. Key works in
this field include Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America by Cathy
N. Davidson (Peterson Fellowship 1984-85); Beneath the American Renaissance:
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Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing
American Antiquarian Society
The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville by David S. Reynolds (AAS-NEH Fellowship1982-83); and Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgement:
Popular Religious Beliefs in Early New England by David D. Hall (AAS-NEH Fellowship1981-82).
A major component of this program is the preparation of a collaborative,
interdisciplinary work of scholarship entitled A History of the Book in America.
Cambridge University Press, in association with AAS, published the first
volume, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, in late 1999. When completed,
the series will comprise five volumes, carrying the story up to the recent past.
The Society has been active as a publisher since its earliest years.
Its semiannual learned journal, the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian
Society, has been published regularly since 1849. In addition, the Society
continues to publish a number of bibliographies and scholarly texts. The
Society has also worked with Newsbank/Readex Microprint Corporation to
microfilm nearly all the non-serial material published in this country from 1639
to 1820. This pioneer series, entitled Early American Imprints, contains the text
in full of approximately 90,000 books, pamphlets, almanacs, and broadsides.
Program
The Society sponsors a wide range of programs for constituencies ranging
from school children and their teachers through undergraduate and graduate
students, postdoctoral scholars, creative and performing artists and writers, and
the general public. The Society also schedules a wide range of symposiums,
lectures, workshops, and conferences on topics dealing with American history
and culture in general and the history of printing, publishing, and reading in
America. Every fall semester, AAS sponsors an undergraduate seminar in
American Studies. Students from five Worcester colleges participate in this
course held at AAS and led by a visiting professor.
AAS programs for the general public include reading and discussion
groups, lectures, musical concerts, theatrical presentations and an innovative
radio variety program called The History Show. Each one-hour edition of The
History Show uses the talents of professional actors and musicians and the
resources of the Society to bring to life a single year in American history.
The Society is also committed to enhancing the quality of K-12 education by sponsoring teacher-training workshops and seminars and collaborating
on a number of educational programs that make available for classroom use
for classroom use for classroom use source materials from the AAS collections.
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Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing
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A Narrative of the Excursion and Ravages of the King’s Troops (Worcester, 1775)
The original document contains the following inscription, in Isaiah
Thomas’s handwriting: This was the first printing done in Worcester….
This document group contains depositions “taken by order of Congress” to support the reports of the atrocities allegedly committed by
British troops, under the command of General Gage, against colonists
in Lexington and Concord, on April 19, 1775.
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Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing
American Antiquarian Society
In the winter of 1999 the Society launched its newest K-12 program, entitled
Isaiah Thomas—Patriot Printer. This highly effective program includes a
dramatic presentation and a facsimile/curriculum packet that examines the
extraordinary life of the Society’s founder and his role in establishing the
American nation and creating a uniquely American culture. The curriculum
packet includes document facsimiles, graphic images, and background materials from the Society’s collections, as well as lesson plans developed by classroom teachers. The Hoche-Scofield Foundation provided initial support for
the Isaiah Thomas – Patriot Printer project. Additional funding is also now
available through grants from the Colonial Society of America, the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, and the Worcester Arts and Humanities
Educational Collaborative.
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Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing
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Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing
Rochester Institute of Technology
Internationally recognized as a leader in imaging, technology, fine and
applied arts, and education of the deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology
enrolls 15,000 full- and part-time students in more than 250 career-oriented
and professional programs, many of which are unique and enjoy worldwide
recognition. Its cooperative education program is one of the oldest and largest in the nation.
For the past decade, U.S. News and World Report has ranked RIT as
one of the nation’s leading comprehensive universities. RIT is also included
in Yahoo Internet Life’s Top 100 Wired Universities, Fisk’s Guide to America’s Best
Colleges, as well as Barron’s Best Buys in Education.
SCHOOL OF PRINT MEDIA
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Considered the best of its kind in the world, RIT’s School of Print Media offers several programs in graphic communications and graphic media
publishing. Part of the nationally accredited College of Imaging Arts and
Sciences, the school offers state-of-the-art equipment, and faculty who
are world-renowned experts, teaching printing from concept to inception.
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Xerox’s iGen3
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Xerox’s DocuColor 6060
With the Xerox DocuColor Book Solution, publishers and book printers
can economically produce high-quality digital books in full color, short run
lengths, quick turnaround times and with a quicker time to market. By using Xerox’s DocuColor 2060 or 6060 Digital Color Presses or DocuColor
iGen3 Digital Production Press, the solution is ideal for pre-edition copies
(complimentary, review and sales samples), particularly childrens’ books.
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Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing
Xerox Graphic Arts
Xerox Graphic Arts
Xerox is the leader in monochrome and color digital production printing–from the DocuTech Publisher Series, to the DocuColor 2000 series
and 6060 Digital Color Presses, and the DocuColor iGen3 Digital Production Press. Offering a comprehensive portfolio of products, solutions
and services, Xerox helps customers build volume, revenue and capture
new business opportunities.
Xerox created on-demand digital book production with the introduction of DocuTech in 1990. One of the most rapidly-growing areas of
print on demand is book publishing, where customers are able to produce short run lengths and personalized books economically.
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Publishing is one of five segments in Xerox’s Worldwide Graphic
Arts Industry group, which is helping to lead the industry’s transition
from traditional printing to The New Business of Printing–just-in-time
and one-to-one–enabled by powerful digital technologies and the Internet. For more information, visit www.xerox.com/graphicarts.
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Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing
PRODUCTION NOTES
Text and cover printed on a Xerox DocuColor iGen3 Digital Production Press on 24
lb. Brilliant White LaserPrint courtesy of Hammermill International Paper, and 80
lb. Winter White Mohawk Options cover courtesy of Mohawk Paper.
Design and execution of the book, accompanying Web site, and signage
by Amina Rab and Roxanne Stevens,
New Media students, College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, RIT.
Original design and concept by Robert Klapka and Sean Morris
The fonts are Adobe Caslon 540 Roman and Italic.
Software used in the production of the print and Web materials
includes Adobe InDesign 2, Adobe Illustrator 10, Adobe Photoshop 7,
and Macromedia Dreamweaver 4.
The Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing Web site is on-line at
http://publish.rit.edu/ITAP.
The Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing is sponsored by Xerox
Corporation and is presented by the School of Print Media,
College of Imaging Arts and Sciences,
Rochester Institute of Technology,
Rochester, NY.
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Dr. Joan Stone
Dean
Professor Barbara Pellow
Administrative Chair
Professor Michael L. Kleper
Paul and Louise Miller Distinguished Professor
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