Blog Posts by Subject: U.S. Newspapers

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The celebration of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism prompted an exploration of our collections to celebrate the work and achievements of the Fourth Estate.

This post will decipher the Library's record of the NYT and demonstrate how to use the NYT to conduct other newspaper research.

For the past several weeks, the world has been eyeing a young rising athlete named Jeremy Lin. Lin plays as a point guard for the New York Knicks. At age 23, he has been captivating the globe with his personality, skills, and victories.

Over the course of one evening, Lin became an international superstar in the field of basketball. 

For the past four weeks, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Village Voice, Le Monde, El 

In NYPL's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, we have an extensive historical collection of regional, local, and international newspapers from Colonial America to Imperial Japan. This blog post will explore how one can 

You probably already know that the New York Public Library's flagship building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street will celebrate its centennial on May 23. There will be galas, games, lectures, and all kinds of activities for young and old. But what about opening day in 1911? There was less gaming, probably, and no smartphone apps to help you locate treasures. Nevertheless, according to newspaper accounts, it was a grand event for New York and the entire country, attended not only 

Many thanks to David Barstow for his presentation here at SIBL on March 16th for our celebration of Freedom of Information Day. As a kind of wrap-up for this year's event I wanted to offer, especially for those who were not able to attend, highlights of his lecture.

The premise of his presentation was to provide a working journalist's perspective on using Freedom of 

As Freedom of Information Day at SIBL—March 16th—approaches, I want to pass along the details of the event and give some background on our presenter, David Barstow of The New York Times. The session is free and open to the public—no reservations are required; we hope you will join us for what promises to be an extremely interesting presentation.

Our event will take place in room 14/15 on the lower level (turn and walk underneath the staircase) here at the Science, Industry and Business Library, 188 

Ryan Haley, Billy Parrott, Erminio D'Onofrio, Karen VanWestering, Jennifer Craft, and Maira Liriano with the 2011 Bernstein Award finalistsThe Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism was established in 1987, through a gift from Joseph Frank Bernstein to the New York Public Library, in honor of journalist Helen Bernstein (now Helen Bernstein Fealy). The gift was in two parts and the idea was to focus on Helen’s love and appreciation of the crucial role that journalism and 

Who are these young beggars and what do they have to do with Thanksgiving?

“I’m looking for a pool hall that used to be on 14^th street on the east side. I’m not sure what of its name. It was open at least as late as 1989, and it was next to a nightclub. Can you tell me the name of the hall?”

This was an interesting reference challenge. Normally when one is faced with a business name question, it’s as simple as heading to the yellow pages or reverse directory (also known as an address directory) for the time period in question. Without an exact 

Nearly everything you thought you knew about the Pony Express is wrong. Well, perhaps not wrong, but exaggerated or romanticized. If you’re like me, you’re probably imagining men dressed in fringed leather uniform on horses, riding at break-neck speeds to carry important business and love letters hundreds of miles, perhaps while simultaneously shooting their Wincester rifles in the air. When not dashing across the prairie, the riders would be found roping cattle, drinking and playing cards in saloons, hunting buffalo, and dodging Black-Hatted Bandits and 

I hate to say it but the sports pages, I generally don’t read them. I like to watch sports but often the columns talk about sports in a way that makes it hard for me to understand. I often don’t know who they are talking about or I don’t know enough about sports so that a writer’s discussion of the minutia of a game will be completely over my head. Hence, this is the reason why I stay away from the reading the sports pages.

The writing of George Vecsey is something different. I am not sure exactly when I began reading Vecsey’s columns but I remember the first time, 

A view of San Quentin.

I've been reading World War I-era newspapers lately (using America's Historical Newspapers, a full-text database available at all four Research Libraries), in a search of mention of famous knitters on the home front whose flying fingers supported the war effort. And yesterday I found a small article from the Daily Alaska Dispatch that painted a vivid picture of such efforts. A report from San Francisco published Dec. 7, 1917, begins: "Knitting needles are flying in the cells and workshops at the San