90 Fun Facts About Newspapers

Until 1966, what filled the front page of The Times of London instead of news?

Classified advertisements had the front page to themselves until 1966, when news finally took over. Later that same year the Astor family agreed to sell the paper to the press baron Roy Thomson.

Which paper's 1948 headline 'Dewey Defeats Truman' was gleefully held aloft by the re-elected president?

The Chicago Daily Tribune, which had called Truman a 'nincompoop', had to go to press hours early because of a printers' strike, and it trusted the polls. Two days later he was handed a copy on his train in St. Louis.

Clifford Berryman's 1902 Washington Post cartoon, which inspired the teddy bear, showed Theodore Roosevelt refusing to do what?

Shoot a tethered bear: his guides had tied one to a tree on a Mississippi hunt, and he called the idea unsporting. Brooklyn shopkeeper Morris Michtom saw the cartoon and put a stuffed 'Teddy's bear' in his window.

Charles Schulz died at what point before his final original Peanuts strip appeared in newspapers in February 2000?

One day earlier: Schulz, who had announced his retirement shortly before because of colon cancer, died in his sleep the night before the farewell strip ran. He had drawn Peanuts since 1950.

Rival advice columnists 'Dear Abby' (Pauline Phillips) and Ann Landers (Esther Lederer) were what to each other?

Twin sisters, born Esther Pauline and Pauline Esther Friedman, who even married on the same day in a joint ceremony. When 'Dear Abby' followed Ann Landers into print, the rivalry soured into a feud that took years to patch up.

In Superman's 1938 debut, Clark Kent worked for which paper, named after a Toronto daily its artist once sold as a newsboy?

The Star, in full the Daily Star, only became the Daily Planet in 1940. Joe Shuster said he also modelled Superman's city, Metropolis, on the Toronto of his boyhood.

Before it described newspapers, 'Tabloid' was the London firm Burroughs Wellcome's trademark for what kind of product?

Compressed pills: the drug firm built 'Tabloid' from 'tablet' in the 1880s. Within two decades the word meant anything boiled down, and newspapers that served the news in short, condensed form took the name.

Which press baron, enraged by Citizen Kane's unflattering portrait of him, pressured cinemas to limit its showings?

William Randolph Hearst is said to have barred any mention of the film in his papers, while Hollywood allies led by Louis B. Mayer offered to buy the negative so that it could be burned. The studio released it anyway.

In Citizen Kane, which little newspaper does the young Kane take over, thinking it would be fun to run?

The New York Inquirer had come to Kane's estate through a foreclosure. Uninterested in his gold mines and oil wells, he told the banker Thatcher not to sell it, then used it to attack Thatcher's fellow tycoons.

Which paper did Alfred Harmsworth launch in 1896 with the slogan 'a penny newspaper for one halfpenny'?

The Daily Mail kept every story short for the busy reader and was an instant hit. Its first issue ran to 397,215 copies, and within three years it was selling half a million a day.

Which paper did Alfred Harmsworth launch in 1903 as a newspaper for women, run by women, then relaunch with pictures?

The Daily Mirror flopped as a women's paper within months, so Harmsworth sacked its women journalists, cut the price to a halfpenny and filled the pages with pictures. Sales took off.

Which Sunday tabloid printed its final edition, headlined 'Thank You & Goodbye', on 10 July 2011 after 168 years?

News of the World was shut by News International within days of the revelation that a private investigator it hired had hacked the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

'Gotcha', a notorious tabloid front page of May 1982, celebrated the torpedoing of which Argentine ship?

The General Belgrano was at first reported as only damaged. As the likely death toll sank in, The Sun's editor pulled 'Gotcha' from later editions and ran 'Did 1,200 Argies drown?', though Rupert Murdoch saw no need.

'It's The Sun Wot Won It' claimed credit in April 1992 for which party's general election victory?

The Conservatives under John Major kept power, and the paper claimed the credit. Twenty years later Rupert Murdoch told the Leveson inquiry the boast was 'tasteless and wrong' and had earned its editor a dressing-down.

'The Truth', a 1989 front page falsely blaming Hillsborough victims, sparked a decades-long boycott of The Sun in which area?

Merseyside turned its back on the paper after it smeared Liverpool fans. When the editor asked Liverpool's manager Kenny Dalglish how to mend things, Dalglish suggested a headline of the same size reading 'We lied'.

'Headless Body in Topless Bar', Vincent Musetto's 1983 headline, ran in which tabloid founded by Alexander Hamilton?

The New York Post began in 1801 as a Federalist broadsheet and turned tabloid only in 1942. Musetto's headline went on to become the title of a 1995 film, and he ended his career as the paper's film critic.

'Ford to City: Drop Dead', words the president never said, was a 1975 headline in which paper, America's first successful tabloid?

The New York Daily News boiled Gerald Ford's refusal of a bailout down to two words he never used. Two months later he signed federal loans for the city, and he later said the headline cost him the 1976 election.

The Great Moon Hoax of 1835, a penny paper's tale of bat-winged lunar people, credited which astronomer with the find?

John Herschel, then observing at the Cape of Good Hope, was amused when the story reached him. Within two years he was complaining of being pestered from every side by people who believed it.

Which British paper bought the rights to the forged 'Hitler Diaries' in 1983 after historian Hugh Trevor-Roper vouched for them?

The Sunday Times rushed the diaries into print just as Trevor-Roper was changing his mind, which he admitted at the launch press conference. Tests soon showed the sixty volumes were the work of the forger Konrad Kujau.

Which British paper dreamed up San Serriffe, an island nation whose place names were printing terms, as a 1977 April Fool?

The Guardian gave the hoax a seven-page supplement, and real advertisers played along: Kodak asked readers to send in their photographs of the islands. Plenty of readers were taken in and wanted to know more.

Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace debuted in March 1951 on the very day an unrelated British Dennis first appeared in which comic?

The Beano's Dennis and the American one are a pure coincidence: neither creator could have known what the other was planning. Hank Ketcham simply based his on his own four-year-old son, who was called Dennis.

Which publisher bought the loss-making New York Times in 1896 and gave it the motto 'All the News That's Fit to Print'?

Adolph Ochs bought control with $75,000 of borrowed money, then in 1898 cut the price from three cents to one. The gamble drew readers away from the sensational penny papers and probably saved the paper.

Which slogan did The Washington Post unveil in February 2017, first on Snapchat and then on its website?

'Democracy Dies in Darkness' was the paper's first official slogan in 140 years. It was a favourite line of Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, who said he had not coined it but picked it up from a judge.

Rupert Murdoch moved his London papers in January 1986 to a new plant in which district, sacking the printers who struck?

Wapping's new plant ran on computer typesetting that needed far fewer printers. The strike collapsed after a year, and within a few years the other national papers had followed Murdoch out of Fleet Street.

Which British daily, launched in October 1986, printed its final paper edition in March 2016 and became online-only?

The Independent was started by three journalists who had left The Daily Telegraph, and within a few years it was selling more than 400,000 copies a day. Then came a long slide that ended with print being abandoned.

Often taken to mean 'opinion', the 'op' in a newspaper's op-ed page is actually short for what?

Opposite: the page sits facing the paper's own editorials. Editor Herbert Bayard Swope of the New York World gave that page over to opinion columns in 1921.

Which grim term do newsrooms use for a newspaper's archive of old clippings and photographs?

The morgue is said to have started as slang for obituaries written while their subjects were still alive, and later came to mean the whole library of clippings and photos.

North American reporters traditionally typed '-30-' on their copy to tell editors what?

The end: '-30-' marked the close of a reporter's copy. Nobody is sure why; a popular theory credits telegraphers, whose code is said to have used 30 to sign off a message.

Which typeface, developed under Stanley Morison's direction, was first seen by the public on 3 October 1932?

Times New Roman was made for The Times of London, which unveiled it that day. Its letters were drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the paper's advertising department.

The spire of St Bride's, the journalists' church on Fleet Street, is said to have inspired what?

The wedding cake took its tiers from the steeple, the story goes: a London baker named Rich is said to have copied its stacked stages for a showpiece cake.

Whose first act as consul in 59 BC, Suetonius says, was to have Rome's daily official proceedings published?

Julius Caesar had the business of the Senate and the people written up and published day by day; Rome's gazette, the Acta Diurna, is traditionally traced to that order. Augustus later stopped the Senate's half being published.

The world's oldest newspaper still published, founded under Queen Christina in 1645, is which country's official gazette?

Sweden's Post- och Inrikes Tidningar dropped its paper edition in 2007 and now appears only online, so the world's oldest newspaper is read on a screen.

Britain's official London Gazette began in 1665 in which city, where Charles II's court had fled the Great Plague?

Oxford received the first Oxford Gazette in November 1665, when the exiled courtiers were said to be too afraid of contagion to touch London papers. It became The London Gazette once the King went home.

Which London newspaper has been printed on pink paper since 1893?

The Financial Times tinted its pages to stand apart from its rival, the Financial News, with which it merged in 1945.

Publick Occurrences, the first multi-page newspaper in British America (Boston, 1690), was closed after how many issues?

One issue was all Benjamin Harris managed: its account offended the colonial governor and the authorities closed it within days, despite a plan to publish monthly 'or, if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener'.

Which British title, first published by W. S. Bourne on 4 December 1791, is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper?

The Observer was meant to win its founder 'a rapid fortune'. Within three years it had left him £1,600 in debt, and he was trying to sell it to the government.

India's first newspaper, launched by James Augustus Hicky in 1780, was published in which city?

Calcutta, then the capital of British India, read Hicky's Bengal Gazette for two years, until its attacks on Governor-General Warren Hastings got its printing types seized.

Which cartoonist, who popularised the elephant as the Republican Party's symbol, also gave Santa Claus his modern look in 1863?

Thomas Nast's 1863 Santa, drawn for Harper's Weekly in the middle of the Civil War, hands out presents in a Union army camp and holds a puppet of Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

Herblock's Washington Post cartoon of 29 March 1950 put which brand-new word on a teetering stack of tar buckets?

McCarthyism topped the buckets weeks after Senator McCarthy claimed to hold a list of State Department communists. Herblock said anyone with a prior claim was welcome to the word 'and to the junior senator from Wisconsin along with it'.

Which children's author drew over 400 political cartoons in two years for the New York daily PM during World War II?

Dr. Seuss, born Theodor Geisel, used PM's editorial page to attack Hitler, Mussolini and American isolationists, above all the aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Which cycling race was created in 1903 by the sports newspaper L'Auto to boost its flagging sales?

The Tour de France leader's yellow jersey, added in 1919, matches the yellow paper L'Auto was printed on.

Which political term first appeared in the Boston Gazette in 1812, alongside a cartoon of a winged, clawed monster?

Gerrymander fuses salamander with the name of Elbridge Gerry, the Massachusetts governor who signed the bill that drew the district.

What did Paul Julius Reuter, founder of the Reuters news agency, use in 1850 to carry news between Brussels and Aachen?

Homing pigeons were faster than the post train, giving Reuter early word of prices on the Paris stock exchange until the wire link was finished.

Which American children's contest began in 1925 when Louisville's Courier-Journal united many local competitions?

The National Spelling Bee passed in 1941 to the Scripps newspaper company, which went on to put its own name on the contest.

Which future inventor, as a teenager selling newspapers on Michigan trains, founded the Grand Trunk Herald?

Thomas Edison was clearing about $50 a week by age 13 and spent the money on supplies for his electrical and chemical experiments.

Which future First Lady worked as the Inquiring Camera Girl for the Washington Times-Herald in the early 1950s?

Jackie Kennedy, then Jacqueline Bouvier, earned $25 a week stopping strangers in the street, asking them witty questions and taking their pictures.

Which author first signed his famous pen name in 1863 while reporting for Nevada's Territorial Enterprise?

Mark Twain took the newspaper job after failing as a miner, and had signed his earlier sketches there as Josh.

Which future prime minister was captured in 1899 while covering the Boer War for London's Morning Post, then escaped?

Winston Churchill was taken prisoner when Boers ambushed his armoured train, then fled the Pretoria camp by stowing away on freight trains.

Which London weekly, founded in 1843 to oppose the Corn Laws, calls itself a newspaper despite its magazine format?

The Economist was launched by Scotsman James Wilson to rally support for abolishing the import tariffs, and never dropped the newspaper label.

The Ashes, named after a mock death notice in the Sporting Times in 1882, is a prize in which sport?

Cricket in England was declared dead in the joke notice after Australia's first Test win on English soil; the body, it said, would be cremated and sent to Australia.

Which fictional New York tabloid's boss, J. Jonah Jameson, pays Peter Parker for pictures of Spider-Man?

The Daily Bugle's boss spent decades smearing Spider-Man in print, unaware that his own photographer was the hero behind the mask.

Which newspaper, delivered by owl, is the most widely read in the wizarding Britain of the Harry Potter books?

The Daily Prophet employs Rita Skeeter, a tabloid journalist who is secretly an unregistered Animagus, able to turn into an animal at will.

Which comic-book reporter debuted in 1929 in Le Petit Vingtième, the children's supplement of a Belgian newspaper?

Tintin is a reporter who hardly ever reports: after writing his editor a dispatch from the Soviet Union, he is almost never seen delivering a story.

Which 2015 Best Picture winner follows Boston Globe reporters exposing a decades-long cover-up in the Catholic Church?

Spotlight is named after the Globe's investigative team, the oldest continuously operating unit of its kind at any American newspaper.

Which actor played strike leader Jack Kelly in Disney's 1992 musical Newsies, about New York's 1899 newsboys' walkout?

Christian Bale's film was a box-office bomb, earning about $3 million, but it found a cult following on home video and was later adapted for Broadway.

Which satirical newspaper was founded in 1988 by two University of Wisconsin students in Madison?

The Onion stopped its print edition in 2013, only for new owners to bring the paper version back in 2024.

Which Washington Post reporter was teamed with Bob Woodward in 1972 to cover the Watergate break-in?

Carl Bernstein was played by Dustin Hoffman, alongside Robert Redford, in the 1976 film of the pair's book All the President's Men.

Which comic strip, syndicated nationally from 1978, held the Guinness World Record as the most widely syndicated?

Garfield was running in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals by 2013, having launched nationwide in just 41.

Which politically charged daily comic strip became, in 1975, the first to win a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning?

Doonesbury's win so irked the Editorial Cartoonists' Society that it voted to condemn the Pulitzer committee, and creator Garry Trudeau backed the protest.

Which critic became, in 1975, the first person to win a Pulitzer Prize for writing about films?

Roger Ebert was promptly offered jobs by two of America's most famous papers and turned both down, because he did not want to leave his home city.

Which Founding Father ran the Pennsylvania Gazette, where the Join, or Die snake cartoon appeared in 1754?

Benjamin Franklin became the Gazette's publisher at just 23, and he ran the cartoon beside his own editorial urging the disunited colonies to act together.

Which 1765 British law taxed newspapers, pamphlets and playing cards printed in the American colonies?

The Stamp Act charged newspapers a penny a sheet, payable in British currency rather than colonial paper money, and set off widespread protests.

Which series of 85 essays backing the US Constitution ran in New York newspapers under the shared pen name Publius?

The Federalist Papers were the work of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, who at times turned out three or four essays in a single week.

Which New York printer's 1735 acquittal on a charge of libelling the royal governor became a landmark for press freedom?

John Peter Zenger's lawyers successfully argued that truth is a defence against a libel charge, and the jury set him free.

Which abolitionist, having escaped slavery, started his own anti-slavery newspaper in Rochester, New York, in 1847?

Frederick Douglass launched the paper from a church basement, funded by £500 that English supporters had given him.

Which journalist left Memphis after a white mob destroyed the presses of her newspaper, the Free Speech and Headlight?

Ida B. Wells was honoured in 2020 with a posthumous Pulitzer Prize special citation for her courageous reporting on lynching.

Which New York World reporter circled the globe in 72 days, beating Jules Verne's fictional Phileas Fogg?

Nellie Bly had already made her name by feigning insanity to expose brutality and neglect inside a women's asylum on Blackwell's Island.

Which missing Scottish missionary was the New York Herald's reporter Henry Morton Stanley sent to Africa to find?

David Livingstone was found in November 1871 at Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, on an expedition paid for by the Herald's publisher.

Which nickname for crusading investigative reporters was popularised by a 1906 Theodore Roosevelt speech?

Muckrakers were named after the Man with the Muck-rake in Pilgrim's Progress, a character who rejected salvation to keep his eyes on the filth.

Which US president bought a failing Ohio daily for $300 as a young man and built it into a success?

Warren G. Harding's purchase was the weakest of the three papers in the growing city of Marion, and he raised the money with partners.

Which national daily, launched in 1982, did critics deride as McPaper for its bite-sized stories and colour graphics?

USA Today was the brainchild of Gannett chief Al Neuharth, and its concise reports and infographics went on to influence newspaper design worldwide.

Which business newspaper, first issued in July 1889, was produced by the founders of Dow Jones & Company?

The Wall Street Journal grew out of a news agency that Charles Dow and Edward Jones set up with fellow reporter Charles Bergstresser.

Which nickname is often given to The New York Times?

The Gray Lady refers both to the colour of newsprint and to the paper's opposition to the sensational journalism of its rivals.

Which tech billionaire bought The Washington Post for $250 million in cash in 2013?

Jeff Bezos made his first big change within months, lifting the paper's online paywall for subscribers of local newspapers in Texas, Hawaii and Minnesota.

Which Washington Post publisher became the first woman to lead a Fortune 500 company in 1972?

Katharine Graham went on to write a memoir, Personal History, that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

Which RAND Corporation analyst leaked the secret Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War to The New York Times in 1971?

Daniel Ellsberg's leak ran to some 7,000 pages of a top-secret study of how the government had made its decisions on Vietnam.

Which news cooperative was formed in 1846 by five New York dailies to share the cost of covering the war with Mexico?

The Associated Press began as a cost-sharing pact between competing papers, and it remains a cooperative that distributes its reports to member newspapers and broadcasters.

Which Ivy League institution has administered the Pulitzer Prizes since they were first awarded in 1917?

Columbia University also owes its journalism school to the founder of the prizes, whose bequest endowed both.

Which is the only Pulitzer Prize category whose winner receives a gold medal instead of a cash award?

Public Service goes to a news organisation rather than a person, so the paper takes home the medal while the other winners get a cash prize.

Which New England paper, a weekly when launched in 1764, is called America's oldest continuously published newspaper?

The Hartford Courant began as the Connecticut Courant and did not turn daily until 1837, and other papers also lay claim to the title.

Which country is home to the newspaper Guinness recognised in 2010 for the world's highest daily circulation?

Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun, founded in 1874, was also named by Guinness as the only newspaper with a morning circulation above 10 million copies.

Which daily, launched by Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1912, served as the official newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party?

Pravda, whose name is Russian for truth, reached a circulation of 11 million as the voice of the party's Central Committee.

Which French daily, founded in 1826, is named after the barber hero of the plays of Beaumarchais?

Le Figaro began as a satirical weekly, borrowing its name and its motto from a comedy that poked fun at privilege.

Which novelist's open letter defending Alfred Dreyfus filled the front page of the Paris daily L'Aurore in January 1898?

Émile Zola was convicted of libel within weeks and fled to England to avoid prison, returning home the following year.

L'Osservatore Romano, first published in 1861, is the daily newspaper of which tiny European state?

Vatican City's paper is owned by the Holy See yet is not its official gazette, and its afternoon edition carries the following day's date.

Which 2016 leak of 11.5 million documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca first went to Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung?

The Panama Papers came from a whistleblower known only as John Doe, whose identity stayed hidden even from the journalists who worked on the story.

Which British newspaper obtained leaked records of MPs' expenses claims and published them in instalments from May 2009?

The Daily Telegraph's revelations stirred widespread public anger and led to a wave of resignations, sackings and repayments by MPs.

Which public investigation into the ethics of the British press was set up in 2011 after a phone-hacking scandal?

The Leveson Inquiry's 2,000-page report found the Press Complaints Commission inadequate and called for a new watchdog with the power to fine.

The News Letter, founded in 1737 and the oldest English-language general daily still printed, is from which city?

Belfast got the paper thanks to a debt: its founder was handed a small printing press in settlement and used it to publish the town's first newspaper.

Which typesetting machine, invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in 1886, reshaped newspaper production for decades?

Linotype cast an entire line of metal type at once, hence line-o'-type, so a small number of operators could set a whole daily paper.