The New York Times

www.nytimes.com

It was on this day in 1851 that the first edition of the New York Times was published in a dirty, candlelit office just off Wall Street by Henry J. Raymond. Raymond had been fired by Horace Greeley at the New York Tribune, and he intended The New York Times to put the Tribune out of business, which it did, but not in Raymond's lifetime. Raymond decided to model his paper on the London Times, which was known for its integrity and lack of sensationalism. They put out 5,000 copies, which were sold for a cent apiece. The Times soon had a circulation of 10,000, did well among the educated and affluent, but it fell on hard times in the 1890s and was bought on the cheap by Adolph Ochs who turned it into the most influential paper in the country, though it remained conservative in style, rarely using big headlines. It only began to use color photographs in the last decade.

Nominated by Candace Cooksey