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| Artist: de Yongh (1896). Image from the Library of Congress. |
In the classic film Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ character, the newspaperman Charles Foster Kane, issued his declaration of principles:
In the
classic film Singing in the Rain, Gene Kelley’s character, silent film star Don
Lockwood, revealed the one motto he had always lived by:
The New
York Times has long aspired to live up to similar standards.
In 1896, the
New York Times, which had been in
business since 1851, adopted its now iconic motto – “the seven most famous
words in US journalism”[i]:
“All
the news that’s fit to print.”
This simple
slogan, said to have been coined by its then new owner Adolph S. Ochs, has
stood the test of time, but in its earliest days its continued existence was
not assured. Critics disliked its “colloquial”
feel and considered it “not strictly grammatical.” The editors may also have appreciated the
enigmatic or cryptic nature of the words.
Within weeks of first adopting the motto they held a contest offering
$100 to the person who could come up with a better motto.
But even
before the contest, the motto had an internal rival – a motto that was more literal,
if less memorable, and which may also have been coined by Adolph Ochs.
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| The Fourth Estate, Volume 5, Number 130, August 20, 1896, page 1. |
“Decent and Dignified Journalism”
On August
13, 1896, Adolph S. Ochs, through his agent Spencer Trask, purchased the New York Times at “public auction”; they
were the only bidders[ii] Although the sale was nominally designated an
“auction”, some considered it “merely a formal proceeding, the outcome of a
reorganization of the New York Times company.”[iii] Details of the sale, including the name of
the buyer, purchase price of $75,000 and date of the auction had already been public
since July 21, 1896,[iv] and
reports of the pending deal had been in circulation since April.
One of the
earliest reports of the pending reorganization and sale of the Times in mid-April of that year suggest
that Ochs may have exercised some control throughout the four months of
reorganization:
The New York Times,
which not many years ago was one of the greatest American papers, will this
week pass under the control of Adolph S. Ochs, present proprietor of the
Chattanooga Times. Mr. Ochs will reorganize the Times Company, and will
put the paper upon a new foundation, with a new editorial force. It is his intention to compete with the other
New York papers, and it is said he is willing to spend money along with the
other newspaper publishers of this city, who are now trying to outdo one
another in extravagance. The Times will
be made a straight Democratic paper.
The Courier-Journal (Louisville,
Kentucky), April 15, 1896, page 6.
Two weeks
after the first reports of the pending sale to Ochs, the New York Times adopted a new motto or
advertising motto or advertising slogan – Don Lockwood would have been
proud:
The Times has become
known as the “model of decent and dignified journalism.”
New York Times, April 26, 1896, page 7.
The new motto
appeared in the New York Times
regularly, if sporadically, from late-April to late-September, 1896. Its last appearance was about one week after
the first appearance of “All the news that’s fit to print.”
New York Times, June
25, 1896, page 12.
New York Times, May 31, 1896, page 8.
The slogan
first appeared on an advertising "art poster " published for Easter
1896, which fell on the fifth of April that year. It is not clear whether
the credit for the expression should go to the artist, John de Yongh, or
someone at the The New-York Times.
It is also not clear whether Ochs was exercising any influence over the paper
at the time. In any case, The Times
praised its own poster on Easter Day:
The Only Decent, Dignified Newspaper.
From the Union Printer and American
Craftsman.
Of all the art posters which have recently
been placed on exhibition in this city for advertising purposes the Easter
poster issued by The New-York Times
is far ahead. It is certainly the most
striking advertisement that has ornamented the billboards in this vicinity for
some time. The main figure is that of a
Grecian maiden holding in her hand an Easter lily. But the pith and point of the whole thing
occurs in a phrase which fills a panel on one side of the poster, and reads: “The New-York Times, the model of decent
and dignified journalism.” The Times is
about the only one among the lot of snarling, backbiting, and scolding
newspapers in this city which is legally entitled to use a phrase of that kind.
The New York Times, April 5, 1896.
In 1904, his
young daughter Iphigene Bertha Ochs recited the motto at the cornerstone-laying
ceremony for the New York Times Building at Times Square:
New York Times, January 1, 1905, page
75.
Ochs recited
the motto himself twenty-five years later at the dedication of Times’ building in Brooklyn:
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 4,
1930, page 16.
In a speech before the National Editorial Association in 1916, Adolph S. Ochs invoked both mottoes while discussing his early days at the Times:
In a speech before the National Editorial Association in 1916, Adolph S. Ochs invoked both mottoes while discussing his early days at the Times:
I thought there was an opportunity in this great city for a metropolitan newspaper conducted on ideal interior daily principles; a newspaper with all the news that's fit to print, honestly presented and fairly and intelligently interpreted; a newspaper for enlightened thoughtful people; a newspaper conducted as a decent, dignified journal.
The Editor & Publisher, Volume 49, Number 2, June 24, 1916, page 3.
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| Editor & Publisher, Volume 49, Number 2, June 24, 1916, page 3. |
He may have
been dissatisfied with the motto, or have just thought up one he liked better. Or,
perhaps, if it was not his in the first place, he may have just wanted to put
his personal stamp on the paper. But
whatever the reason, the New York Times
launched the new
motto with no particular fanfare about one month after the public auction.
A New Motto
The New York Times’
online timeline of its history dates the first appearance of the motto on
its editorial page as October 25, 1896.[v] But the motto actually appeared more than a
month earlier. It first appears in a stealth
marketing campaign as teeny little, innocuous advertising items squeezed in and
among stock quotes or classified ads at the bottom of one or two interior pages
per issue.
The first
one appeared on September 19, 1896:
 |
| First appearance of new slogan - September 19, 1896, page 10. |
New York Times, September 19, 1896, page 10.
The new
motto items seem to have replaced similarly sized and placed notices advertising
the location of the “Times Up-Town Office” at 1,269 Broadway at 32d Street,
which had regularly appeared in the paper previously, but which stopped when
the motto started appearing:
New York Times, September 17, 1896, page
11.
The new
motto may have been novel in its directness and succinctness, but its sentiments
were not new. A newspaper seller in
Delaware hawked his wares with something similar, if wordier, while focusing on
fitness to be read, as opposed to fitness to print:
The New York Times used similar language
in an ad campaign that appeared in several newspapers 1890[vi]:
The excellence and
interest of The Times as a general newspaper are proverbial. It is its business to print the news, all the news that it is worth anybody’s time to read.
The Wilmington Morning Star (Wilmington,
Delaware), December 10, 1890, page 3.
If nothing
else, the new motto provided the Times
with an excellent proverb to go along with their proverbial excellence.
In early
October[vii],
the new motto’s campaign switched out of stealth mode and turned on an electric
sign at Madison Square. The sign “attracted
the admiring attention from multitudes in the vicinity” and looked something
like this:
New York Times, October 22, 1896, page
7.
The editors
waited a few weeks before bringing specific attention to the motto within the
pages of the paper. On October 22, 1896,
they launched a crowd-sourced write-in contest, offering $100 to any reader who
could come up with a slogan which, in ten words or less, better conveyed the
idea, “All the news that’s fit to print.”
The announcement spelled out the enigmatic slogan’s intended meaning – Charles Foster Kane would
have been proud:
The
Times
seeks a phrase more expressive of The Times’s
policy, of freedom from sensationalism; designed to appeal distinctively to the
intelligent and the thoughtful; of having its columns devoid of revolting details
of scandal, sickening chapters of crime, unfounded attacks on public men, and
reckless assaults on private interests; of being essentially a newspaper for
the home, a newspaper that is progressive and enterprising, without being
indecent or careless of the rights of others; of being newsy and entertaining
and at the same time clean and instructive; of earnestly endeavoring to be the
family paper of the Greater New-York; of appealing directly to the tastes of
refined and cultured people; and of being a newspaper that upholds morality,
inspires patriotism, and encourages good citizenship.
The
New-York Times will pay One Hundred Dollars for a phrase that will
better convey this idea: “ALL THE NEWS THAT’S’ FIT TO PRINT,” everything of
human interest, but nothing except the truth.
Over the
next two weeks, The Times
generated interest in its paper, the contest, and the prize with free press
from newspapers throughout the country reporting on the contest. And perhaps more importantly, they got their
readers to associate the paper with the lofty standard expressed by the new motto. If people did not understand the expression the
first time they read it, the contest and coverage of the contest provided ample
opportunity to learn its meaning and to associate the paper with its goals.
After one
month, the contest ended with no winner.
In the judgment of the editors, none of the readers’ entries better
articulated the meaning of their motto.
They did,
however, still award the $100 prize to the best entry. The three runners-up were:
Always decent; never
dull.
The news of the day;
not the rubbish.
A decent newspaper for
decent people.
The winning
submission came from D. M. Redfield of New Haven, Connecticut:
All the world’s news,
but not a School for Scandal.
 |
| The Winning Postcard. |
Many of the
also-rans were more entertaining.
Some of them
did not stray far from the source material:
All the news that’s fit
to read.
All the news that
should be printed.
Some of them
did not stray far, but found a way to make it rhyme:
The world’s news that’s
fit to peruse.
All the news fit to
use.
Some did not
stray far, but upped the clever quotient – perhaps a bit too far:
All the news without a
nuisance.
I found this
one perplexing:
Full of meat, clean and
neat.
This one seems more like a ‘70s kitchen
cleanser or shampoo slogan:
Cheerful, clean, with
glossy sheen.
This one makes me think of
doughnuts:
Dollars to dimes if it’s
good it’s in The Times.
Some of them sounded more like a
beer commercials (or a fictional Japanese whiskey commercial, “Make it Suntory Time”):
No times like The New-York Times
The
Times
for the times.
Many of them featured a little alliteration,
perhaps a little too much alliteration:
Neat news in a
nutshell.
If in The Times ‘tis writ, ‘Tis decent,
pungent, forceful, fit.
Some reflect the more rural nature
of the population at the time:
We skim the day’s news
and leave the dregs
The Wheat of the News
Threshed of Chaff.
Some were a bit too high-toned:
Avoids the Charybdis of
dullness and the Scylla of sensationalism.
In
retrospect, it seems like a good decision to stick with their original (well,
second) motto. It deftly avoids the
Charybdis of triteness and the Scylla of pomposity, while upholding the highest
ideals of Charles Foster Kane and Don Lockwood.
The motto finally landed on its familiar position on the
front page on February 10, 1897.
[ii] The Star Gazette (Elmira, New York),
August 13, 1896, page 7.
[iii] The Tallapoosa New Era (Dadeville,
Alabama), August 20, 1896, page 4.
[iv] The Evening Post (New York), July 21,
1896, page 2; On the St. Lawrence and
Clayton Independent (Clayton, New York), July 24, 1896, page 1.
[v] New York Times
Historical Timeline - http://www.nytco.com/who-we-are/culture/our-history/#1910-1881-timeline
. Barry Popik’s online
etymological dictionary, The Big Apple, dates the earliest appearance of
the motto to October 9, 1896.
[vi] Barry
Popik’s online
etymological dictionary, The Big Apple, found this ad in the New York
Times, December 4, 1890, page 4. It also
appeared in other papers.
[vii] The New York Times, October 22, 1896,
page 7.
[Revised June 27, 2017, adding paragraph about Easter Poster]
[Revised June 27, 2017, adding paragraph about Easter Poster]
"All the news that's fit to print" is a pun that refers to movable type -- which before the days of linotypography, had to be "fit to print" before a page could sent to press.
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