The San Diego Union has recently been marketing its Sunday edition published on Saturday. Of course, this is hardly new. I remember being a kid and learning with disappointment that this edition wouldn’t actually contain the Sunday news. What is new, to me at least, is that they refer to it as the “Bulldog Edition”. Is there any history to this term, or did the marketing head just have a pet bulldog he thought would look good in the ads?
Everything I post will be from JE Lighter, American Slang.
Earliest use-1918. “…filler of current but not immediate news, differing from ‘grapevine’ in that it still breathes, and differing from news in that it has lost its freshness…”
“The earliest morning edition of a daily newspaper.”
1926, “…dated as of the next day and put on the street as soon as the afternoon papers’ sale slowed down.”
Of course, this implies that you are old enough to remember when there were afternoon papers. 