Blog Posts by Subject: News Media, Journalism and Publishing

On May 2, 1885, the first issue of Good Housekeeping was published, and today it is one of the five surviving "Seven Sisters" of women's magazines. In some ways, the word "housekeeping" alone seems like an artifact, but you don't need to be a gourmet chef or interior decorating savant to enjoy these highlights from the last one hundred and thirty years of Good Housekeeping.

We're looking at the beloved author who told us that real courage was “when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

Erasure is a form of literature, often poetry, created by selectively erasing words from an existing text to produce a new work. An event on April 25 will showcase examples and give you a chance to create your own.

Media figure, author, editor, and entrepreneur Smiley appeared at The New York Public Library's Books at Noon. In this episode of the podcast you'll hear Smiley discuss his long friendship with the late Maya Angelou.

Great news: James McGrath Morris's new biography on journalist Ethel Payne, Eye on the Struggle, is now available in the Schomburg Gift Shop!

As we await the documentary Montage of Heck, we're looking back at some of the best journalism written about Kurt Cobain and Nirvana.

Charles Blow speaks with Schomburg Center director Khalil Muhammad about his middle name, how he was nearly baptized twice, and his unexpected childhood hero.

What started as a simple comparison of beautifully illustrated books on fashionable dress, trades’ dress, and ethnic costume held in both the Art and Architecture Collection and the Rare Book Division turned into an open-ended bibliographic exercise with many rabbit holes to get lost in.

A look at the papers of two brothers who were at the center of New York publishing in the mid-1800s.

The Art & Architecture Collection has a large collection of women’s (and some men’s) 19th century fashion-plate periodicals. While French fashion dominated the 19th century this post features a selection of magazines from England, America and Sweden.

To honor Derek Jeter's tenure in the Bronx, I thought it would be nice to pull quotes from journalists who have covered Jeter's career, from Jeter's teammates, and from Jeter himself.

The entire run of the Nation, from its first issue in 1865 to the present (save for the most recent month) is online through The Nation Archive, which is available only at the four research centers of the New York Public Library.

The penguin. The borzoi. When we peruse our bookshelves, we see spines decorated with the symbols of publishing houses. But this tradition is not modern: starting with the second book ever printed, members of the trade were making their presence known. These marks were words and illustrations carved into wood and included at the beginning or end of a book to indicate the printer responsible. In NYPL’s Rare Book Division, we have a treasure trove of printers’ marks to explore.

Here at NYPL Labs we’re working on an ebook-borrowing and reading app. This post explores automated ways for creating covers for public-domain ebooks.

Today the Academy of American Poets features Johnson's powerful poem "In the Absence of Sparrows," honoring his close friend, as part of its Poem-a-Day series.

Each year since 1988, the Library has awarded Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism to a journalist for a work of in-depth, investigative reporting. Over 100 non-fiction books were nominated this year, all of them read, discussed and vetted by a Library Review Committee. These are the five amazing books the group chose as this years five finalists—all must-reads!

A mystical history of NYC below Chambers Street… the link between our financial and environmental crises… the life and photographs of Ansel Adams… our always-on, simultaneous society… the 

New York Public Library has received a three-year grant from the Aeroflex Foundation and Hippocampus Press to process one of its hidden gems, the General Research Division's Amateur Periodical Collection. The grant will allow this significant collection to be catalogued for the first time, which will provide greater access as well as help identify items for digitization in the future.

The Library's collection contains nearly 3,000 titles, 

Mark Fuhrman investigated OJ Simpson's murder, along with his partner, Brad Roberts, who recovered more evidence than him, yet he was never questioned on the stand at the murder trial.