My Home About Me

Our "public editor" Irwin Chusid sends along this remarkable account of yet another way the "Pinch" Sulzberger regime is destroying the New York Times franchise. Irwin says, "A friend at the New York Times emailed this note today. She gave permission to circulate it, though I deleted identifying names and modified job titles."

The old Times Building is now owned by Tishman-Speyer Realty Corp. Being the new owners, they sent a fire inspector about four months ago to check out the nooks and crannies of their building. On the 14th or 15th floor there is a quite large room that NO ONE ever enters. About two months ago I'm riding in the freight elevator with a few custodial gents. They're poring over an old payroll book. I ask them where they got it, and they tell me that they've been dumping shelves and shelves of them dating back to the turn of the last century (1900). The fire inspector and Tishman said "they're a hazard." I'm stumped. Didn't the NYT want ANY of them? For a historian they're the raw material of history. For example: what did that elevator operator and reporter earn in 1904? How many hours did they work?

The real compelling facts would be the roster of reporters. Before the 1920's stories rarely had bylines. Here were the lists of reporters whose names have been lost to history. Why not donate them to the Museum of the City of NY? Or the NY Historical Society? Out of hundreds, only two were salvaged -- one from 1906 with Adolph Ochs' signature signing off every week on the pay of these unknown men who made the paper the Great Gray Lady.

As I was looking at the payroll books I saw a bound volume of the Times from September 1963, and a bound volume of the "Western Edition" that spanned about two years. One of the men working on the removal noted that "there were hundreds of them." (Remember it took 3 to 4 months to clean out the room.) I opened the Sept 63 volume and laughed ... a hearty blackly humorous chuckle. On most pages where there was no byline, someone had inked in and revealed the names of the writers. "Special to the NYT ..." Mysteries uncovered. The writer of each editorial was also noted. (Herbert Matthews, Abe Raskin, on and on...) Of course!!! These were the bound REFERENCE copies FOR THE RECORD. All dumped in the year 2006. I don't know if there was a complete run of the paper. I doubt it. But even 50 years of them would have been valuable.

So who's to blame? Certainly not the janitors. They were following orders from above. Upper level management was asked and they passed it on down to (I think) Corporate Records (different than the Family and Company Archives), who also passed. No one with any, as they say in Yiddish, "saychil," historical understanding, ever bothered to look at them. They would have known right away that these volumes were priceless. I told [a colleague] about the loss, and he said, "Why didn't they ask me?" Because that would have meant more work.

It's a dangerous time here on W. 43rd St. We're moving into smaller digs so the emphasis is to dump, and since "everything is on the Internet," who needs this &*?!*%? I hold the Philistines controlling the Temple to blame for this disheartening wound.

The irony is that I heard several times that these bound volumes (of the daily) had been dumped years ago. A very cruel joke. Long gone, then they reappear for an instant, and then gone again ... forever.

I laughed quite a bit -- and then I was heartsick.

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