Hot Off the Press
The day after Sen. Barack Obama won the general election, New Yorkers lined up to purchase a rare remaining copy of Wednesday's New York Times.
By Michele Monteleone on Publish Date November 5, 2008.[Note to readers: At least through the weekend of Nov. 8-9, and possibly longer, copies of Wednesday’s paper will be available for the $1.50 cover price at Times headquarters, at 620 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, between 40th and 41st Streets. Commemorative editions may also be ordered online or at 1-800-671-4332, for $14.95, which includes shipping and handling.]
Updated, Nov. 7 | If you were an early bird who likes news the old-fashioned way, you probably got your election results served up properly, with ink on newsprint — but if you slept late Wednesday morning, the news at many newsstands was that there was no News.
No Daily News, that is. And no New York Times or New York Post, either. Newsstands across the city sold out of the daily city papers quickly, leaving latecomers searching for any remaining copies.
The Times printed 75,000 additional copies for the New York area, and people lined up all day Wednesday at the paper’s Manhattan headquarters to buy them. More copies from that press run went on sale again Thursday morning, with a line out the door, and customers leaving with stacks in hand. On Friday, The Times announced it had printed 150,000 more copies and would be selling them through the weekend at the headquarters and through mail order.
On Wednesday morning, there were no copies to be found at the usual outlets. “People want it as a souvenir,” said Rose Barmas, who runs a newsstand at Broadway and 116th Street. She said her daily papers were sold out by 9 a.m., including 180 copies of The Times. (Copies were up on eBay, with asking prices in the hundreds of dollars.)
“I kept one copy for my son,” Ms. Barmas whispered.
Across Broadway at 115th Street, M. D. Butto, at his newsstand, said he was tiring of telling people there were no more daily papers available.
In Harlem, at the Eighth Avenue Deli Grocery, on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 154th Street, the only papers left on the wire rack was a single copy of El Diario. (Headline: “Presidente.”)
Gerald Addison, 54, a lifelong Harlem resident standing outside, said he had secured a Daily News, but his copies of other papers were snatched from a table in the front of the deli, when he put them down and turned his back to chat with friends.
“People bought them all up early,” he said. “They were walking down the street waving them, because history was made.”
People waiting outside the New York Times building on Wednesday afternoon to buy the paper, after 75,000 additional copies were printed. (Photo: Earl Wilson/The New York Times)Selim Malik, a Pakistani immigrant who works a newsstand at Broadway and 83rd Street, said customers were trying to buy up papers in quantity, so he had to establish a one-paper-per-customer rule.
“By 8 a.m., I’m all sold out,” he said. “I called the company and asked for more papers, and they said, ‘Impossible.’ ”
People walked up to the stand and asked for newspapers. Some registered their disappointment with shrugs, others with swear words.
“I’ve turned away hundreds of people this morning,” he said. “They said there are no papers anywhere.”
A man with a plastic bag filled with newspapers walked up and was told the same thing: No Times, no Post, no News.
The man, a filmmaker and British native named Alex Wilson, was walking Broadway searching for newspapers to save for posterity. In a bag, he carried The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The New York Observer and The Financial Times.
“It’s a momentous day for America, and I want the papers as mementos to show the grandkids someday, to show them this was a big turning point for this country.”
Jennifer Mauer, a spokeswoman for The Daily News, said that by midday, the paper had printed more than 100,000 extra copies of the paper. Papers across the country did the same.
A spokesman for the New York Post said its newspaper sales were up more than 10 percent.
A Times spokeswoman, Catherine J. Mathis, said on Wednesday morning that the paper had printed 35 percent more papers to be sold at newsstands. Still, by morning company officials found that papers were “selling out all across the metropolitan area” and decided to print 75,000 more copies for sale in the New York area.
Ms. Mathis said that newly printed papers would be sold at select commuter hubs, including Pennsylvania Station, Grand Central Terminal and the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
To address the additional demand, officials at The Times began selling copies of the paper directly outside the company’s headquarters at 40th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. On the sidewalk, security guards fashioned an ad-hoc newsstand by stacking several empty cardboard boxes. They rushed over bundles of newspapers and tried to maintain order as readers held out cash and clamored for papers, with many complaining about the one-per-customer policy.
Sonia Pusey, 38, of a writer from Brooklyn, snagged the last paper, sending up a groan from the people lined up behind her. Ms. Pusey said she got to her newsstand in Brooklyn at 8 a.m. and asked the clerk to hold the last copy of The Times for her while she went to a cash machine. When she returned, he had sold it.
“I said, ‘Do you know what you just sold?’ ” she recalled. ” ‘You just sold history.’ ”
Ms. Pusey said she spent several hours searching Brooklyn and then Queens for daily newspapers and finally drove to The Times building. As she was leaving, the people in line roared as they spotted a man with a hand truck loaded with fresh newspapers.
Ms. Mathis said The Times sold roughly 50,000 more copies than usual the day after Election Day in 2004, and “based on what we’ve seen today, we expect to significantly surpass those sales.”
Print runs will also be increased for the Thursday paper, she said.
The paper also reported a record-high 2.7 million “mobile page views” for Tuesday.
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