Why does the New York Times include a line about yesterday's weather on the front page?

January 21, 2005 9:03 AM

Why does the New York Times include a line about yesterday's weather in the weather squib on the front page?
posted by scratch to media & arts (7 comments total)

Maybe because predictions aren't always accurate and they are, after all, the paper of record.
posted by jmgorman at 9:18 AM on January 21, 2005

I'd say it's useful because you remember how the weather felt the day before, and by comparing yesterday's forecast to today's, you can tell if it's gonna be better or worse...
posted by XiBe at 9:36 AM on January 21, 2005

Also, perhaps because it's a paper of record and is widely archived. It could serve as a historical note on the previous day's weather, which data wouldn't otherwise appear in the paper. I can imagine this being very useful to historians; sometimes research on weather is enough to change interpretation of past events.

Going by predictions alone would result in some inaccurate information about storms, temperatures, and other weather.
posted by Miko at 9:40 AM on January 21, 2005

Addition: Journalistic Jargon and Even More Journalistic Jargon. The term for the weather brief at the top of the paper would be the "weather lug" (most common) "weather ear" or "ear copy". The term "squib" refers to a brief, light, comic piece used as filler for entertainment's sake. For instance, Mark Twain made his name writing squibs. Think funny "Talk of the Town" piece, only shorter. You don't hear the word 'squib' around the newsroom so much anymore, since they've gone out of favor, but occasionally you'll find them gathered together in something like "Metropolitan Diary."
posted by Miko at 9:53 AM on January 21, 2005

Don't all papers that have a weather lug on the front page do that? I know the paper I grew up with did. It'd have a graphic and temperature prediction for the day and give the previous day's high and low.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:55 AM on January 21, 2005

All the newsrooms I've been in called it a weather bug, not lug. (Or weather box or weather ear.)
posted by CunningLinguist at 10:14 AM on January 21, 2005

A "bug" is a brief notation like [STATES] or [AP] that designates the source for a story if it's a news service.
posted by Miko at 12:25 PM on January 21, 2005