Key Takeaways
- The New York Times maintains an extensive historical archive, known as "the morgue," in Manhattan.
- Archivist Jeff Roth manages millions of news clippings, books, and photographs dating to the 19th century.
- The archive was crucial for reporters before the internet, providing historical context and serendipitous discoveries.
- Its unique, anachronistic filing system categorizes vast historical content for the organization.
Deep Dive
- Host Rachel Abrams introduces a visit to The New York Times "morgue," an archive of historical news clippings and books in Manhattan.
- The archive contains millions of newspaper clippings and books, with some originating from the University of Texas, dating back to the 1800s.
- Archivist Jeff Roth has managed the collection, which is estimated to weigh 700,000 pounds, since 2007.
- Former executive editor A.M. Rosenthal highlighted the "joy of serendipity" found in the morgue, which was crucial for reporters.
- Rosenthal stated, "No morgue, no paper," emphasizing the archive's role as the paper's memory and history.
- The archive's origins date back to the late 1800s, with a formalized system around 1905 that employed young boys for collection and coding.
- The term "morgue" for the archive originated from stories being placed in "dead drawers."
- As these drawers accumulated with historical content, the collection collectively became known as the morgue.
- This distinctive term is believed to have been in use since the late 1800s.
- The New York Times archive contains approximately 3,000 to 4,000 advance obituaries, written ahead of a person's death.
- The earliest clip files within the morgue date back to the late 1870s.
- An article about a Civil War general and Speaker of the House was written in 1899, with the subject living into the 1930s.
- The archive, housed in the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street from 1913 to 2007, operated with three daily shifts.
- At its peak, the morgue employed 20 to 30 people, combining clippings and a picture library in 1968.
- Archivist Jeff Roth started around 1993, retrieving requested materials for reporters and picture editors from a counter.
- Archivist Jeff Roth estimates the collection contains over 10 million physical clippings, categorized using a historical thesaurus of descriptors.
- The archive's anachronistic filing system categorizes modern technology like computers under older terms such as "office machines" and "calculators."
- New categories are created for emerging terms, but some, like "TikTok," do not yet have dedicated files.