The three-star edition

June 26, 2007 7:31 AM

Does there exist a reference to help determine when a particular newspaper went to press?

Many papers employ stars somewhere in the masthead to indicate a revision or later printing of that day's edition. The New York Times, it seems, uses dots.

In general, do more stars or dots indicate a later or earlier edition? Are there exceptions to this rule? And has anyone come across an aggregator of these indicators? And do they have a name? Surely this must be someone's obsession.

posted by deadfather to media & arts (9 comments total)

You can usually call the printer for a particular newspaper and they will give you the printing codes for figuring out early and late editions. This is not as commonplace as it used to be. Until the 1970s, some newspapers would print two or three editions everyday. When the New York three: the World, Herald, and Tribune merged and then finally folded, that was the real end of the early and late edition dailies. Although the SF Chronicle, before Hearst bought it and junked the great Examiner, they published a late edition called Chronicle PM to compete with the afternoon Examiner.

New York Times, as it is nationally published has "Regional Final Editions" but that is not really as though they published earlier pieces. Now that the internet can really give publishers time to filter pieces and separate truth from fiction (usually) the editor has in some ways more leeway to choose stories and work on coverage for print and decide what will stay on the web.

Newspapers in the British Isles still occasionally do multiple editions. Most recently after the Boxing Day tsunami, because newspapers tend to not print on the 25th and 26th of December due to holidays, they had to rush back and file and print on reduced staffs and printed a special edition that was smaller than a regular newspaper.
posted by parmanparman at 7:55 AM on June 26, 2007

About the dots: I actually think you are mistaking a common printing technique for color mixing for an updating code. You might notice on the side of the front of USA Today a CMYK bar of colors. That is the same, I think, of a dot color readout for printing.
posted by parmanparman at 7:57 AM on June 26, 2007

Newspapers in the British Isles still occasionally do multiple editions. Most recently after the Boxing Day tsunami, because newspapers tend to not print on the 25th and 26th of December due to holidays, they had to rush back and file and print on reduced staffs and printed a special edition that was smaller than a regular newspaper.

This isn't right. Every British national paper does multiple editions every day, mainly because of the logistics of delivery in the UK, but also for editorial reasons.

The first editions go to the very north of Scotland and the outlying islands, and the later ones move progressively closer to the paper's home. Most papers also print on the 26th, and our tsunami edition was exactly the same size as our regular edition, it was just crammed with tsunami news.

OP: We call them edition stars. Until about four years ago, ours worked down, starting from five. Now they work up from one as the night goes on. in the UK, you'll also see things like "S or NW" marked on the top folio of some pages; this indicates that such a page only appears in certain editions -- a story about Scottish football will only be in the Scottish editions of a paper.

The other reasons for editioning are to put off competitors. If a paper has a big story it wants to keep exclusive, often they'll put out a first edition with a rubbish splash, then switch to the real scoop for later editions. By the time other papers see the late edition, it's too late to chase up that story.
posted by bonaldi at 8:05 AM on June 26, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

BTW, the reasons stars used to count down was that you could update the front page without remaking it.

The plates that go on the printing press were once made by shining light through a large film negative of the page. You could stop something appearing on the plate by covering it with a piece of light-proof tape.

To remove an edition star, you just covered it on the film with a piece of red tape and remade the plate. If nothing else was changing on the front, this saved you outputting an entire new negative film just for the star.

Nowadays, we print directly to plate, with no film involved, and while you can scratch the plate to take away the star, it's simpler just to output new plates. So we add them, and resend the page to be output again.
posted by bonaldi at 8:09 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

parmanparman: On the front page of NY Times, there are a varying number of dots between the volume and issue numbers, just under the masthead (or flag, or whatever you call it) to the far left of the date. See here (5 dots), here (4 dots), here (3 dots), and here (2 dots).
posted by deadfather at 8:13 AM on June 26, 2007

But can you find any dot changes in any one single printing day from one newspaper? I challenge you. Awaiting the update already.
posted by parmanparman at 9:35 AM on June 26, 2007

parmanparman: I hardly wish to hold you in abeyance, but I have no findings to report. The Times' dots are something that only recently came to my attention, after I was told separately by two persons that the dots are edition markers. I do know and have confirmed that stars are used in this manner on dailies in other cities, so it seemed a reasonable assertion. The copy I have in hand, procured this morning, displays two dots.

I'm certainly willing to concede that they're not edition markers. Of course, one then asks: what are they / why do they change?
posted by deadfather at 11:02 AM on June 26, 2007

Parmanparman: The New York Times uses different number of dots on the National edition (3) and the New York City / Late Edition (2). Go here and toggle between the two editions to see the difference.
posted by Charlie Brown at 12:05 PM on June 26, 2007

I can't speak for the NYT but I know that if you look at the folio on page 2 of the wall street journal, the Star-Ledger, and the Trenton Times, you see a letter code for the press and or printing plant which produced the paper. I live in NJ and my wall street journal always has a "p" on page two telling me it is printed in Princeton (really South Brunswick but i digress). In the Star-Ledger you will find the letters from A to K (yes that's how many presses they have). Wall street uses an asterisk to denote a change. They count up and it can be caused by anything from a changing story to a misspelling. The Ledger uses + and little squares with + signs. A + or ++ generally means the plate was changed before it ever made it to press at the initial startup. Square (in the industry called a four star) by itself or in conjunction with +, ++, +++, ++++ are changes after the initial press start. O by itself is the ultimate revision this is usually only used for something like the final score of a playoff game or voting result.

Also, something to keep in mind is that many papers have a state edition and then zoned editions for say, counties or townships. The state papers are always printed first and thus are usually the worst looking as far as color, registration, ink density, scumming...

hope this helps.
www.metaprinter.com
posted by Paleoindian at 4:08 PM on June 26, 2007