When I read old newspapers either in person or online, occasionally I note something like “early edition”, “market edition”, or something similar. In the past (let’s say 1920 to 1970), how many editions did the typical newspaper have–morning or afternoon? When did the first come out and when did the last get printed? And are there any contemporary papers that still bother, in the internet age, with seperate editions?
Entirely depends on the newspaper and the market which it served. The larger the market, geographically, the more editions you would have, since you would have to print the first edition earlier, in order to have it delivered to the furthest-away distributors.
You wouldn’t necessarily have differently-named editions, and there might be little, or even no, difference between earlier and later printings of the paper. But if a big story broke, you could stop the presses to get it in. Or you might deliberately withhold an exclusive story from the earlier editions, since you didn’t want it broadcast on radio/television the night before it appeared in your paper.
As noted, it varied a lot. But your average big-city morning paper would probably have an early edition that went on trains to the hinterland about 2 am, a metro edition finished around 4 am, a city edition distributed beginning around 6 am, and possibly a late edition replate for downtown newsstands that was out by 7 am. Sunday papers often had a “bulldog” edition out on Saturday morning.
Afternoon papers would have editions timed to include final stock prices and possibly later sports replates with the results of afternoon baseball games.
I used to get the SF Chronicle in Sacramento. I usually got the three-star edition. On occasion, I’d read that in the morning, go to SF, and see a completely different six-star ed.
As a young man living in 1960s London, I would buy the early edition of The London Evening News on a Thursday because it had twenty or so pages of jobs. The later edition had more up-to-date news, but far fewer jobs.
The early edition of the London Evening Standard would be in the hands of buyers by late morning. Final editions would probably be produced around 5-6pm. It, and its rival the Evening News, would be aimed at the commuters who would need something to read on the train going home. Nowadays there is only one paper, and it’s given away.
Many questions are answered in SDMB’s own Trivia Dominoes: Play Off the Last Bit of Trivia thread.
During this period, almost as many extras were published by Hearst’s competitor, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.
As said, the editions varied in number and time. The earliest editions might come out by midnight or one: those are the ones you see people reading in “backstage” movies - movies about Broadway - where they go to a club and wait up until they can read the reviews. Sports editions printed after the late games from the West Coast (for those papers in the East) were common. Editions like these were aimed at late night crowds and sold through newsboys and a few all-night newsstands. Other editions were timed to hit the newsstands just before the commuters got on board the trains and subways to go to work in the morning. Tabloids were preferred for their smallness. A separate edition was printed to be delivered to subscribers; this was usually an early one because of the extra time needed for two stages of delivery (to the drop-off point and then to the homes).
Some papers today still have various editions for subscribers and newsstands. The New York Times has a city edition and a national edition.
The answer varied from decade to decade and paper to paper and day to day and whether there was breaking news and whether there was a newspaper war and anything else you can think of, probably including sunspots.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch still prints an edition in the evening, which goes to vendors, and a late edition for home delivery. They can also do a “lift” some time after midnight, replacing the outer pages if there’s breaking news.
It’s also possible to buy a “Sunday” edition of the Post-Dispatch at about 11:30 on Saturday morning. The ads and features are all the same, but obviously the news and sports sections will be completely redone for Sunday.
Here’s the story of the eleven 1948 election editionsof the Chicago Tribune, which started out with Dewey leading, then Dewey’s campaign claiming victory, the the famous “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN,” followed by headlines where the Dewey lead narrows, Dewey hangs on to his lead, and finally Truman winning.
A recent (and probably the last) example I can think of was on 9/11. Because it happened in the late morning most newspapers had already gone to press and been delivered. Smaller ones (like my local) just waited until the 12th, but a lot of big papers issued ‘special late editions’ to provide coverage that day.
We get the NY Times in Montreal that is printed in Boston. From the lack of sport scores from the previous evening, it was clearly put to bed in the early evening, although we don’t get it in Montreal till about 11:00 AM. Clearly the NY edition is later.
The most amazing example I recall was probably from about 1950. My father and I had gone to a baseball game at Shibe Park (21st and Lehigh) in Philadelphia. We left when the game ended, took a streetcar 7 blocks, took the Broad St. Subway to Market St., took the Market St. subway/el to 56th St., came down the steps to change to the G bus (56th St). At the bottom of the subway steps was a newstand. They sold the latest edition of the Daily News that already contained the final score of the ball game! This means that in under an hour, they had set the final score in type, printed them, put them on trucks, and distributed them to at least some newstands.
I remember back in the days when I read an actual physical paper on the train the last daily edition of the Sydney Sun was called the Late Final Extra.
In the case of the Evening Standard, while the Wikipedia page notes that it moved to a single “West End Final” edition in 2009, it remains commonplace for them to alter the front page at least. Thus the copy I picked up in Westminster less than an hour ago (and which probably reached the pavements at just after 4pm) leads with this story about nursery places, but some passengers on the Tube had copies leading on the current Libor court case.
Perhaps the London Evening Standard is customizing the front page based on the demographics of the particular area?
Wasn’t there also something of a class distinction between papers based on what time of day they were published? Morning papers were aimed at upper class people who could pick up a paper and read it in their office. Evening papers were aimed at working class people who couldn’t read a paper until they got home from their job.
Even our local paper, the State, which is a fucking rag, often prints a first edition. When we get the microfilm they give us both pages (in other words, it’s all final edition unless the first edition page is different and then there’s both.) Confuses newbies.
Not necessarily. A lot of big city papers in the Northeast, both morning and evening, focused on commuters riding the train, streetcar, bus or subway. Papers in smaller cities often published in the afternoon, allowing the staff to work something close to normal hours. Outside of the Northeast, “regional” papers would print an edition in the evening to be sent out to the boonies and arrive by morning.
In a big city like New York, you could have the highly respectable Times (Democratic) and Herald Tribune (Republican) battle it out with the blue-collar Daily News in the mornings, while Chicago had the blue-collar Sun-Times and conservative Tribune going head to head in the morning while the aggressive American competed with the respectable Daily News in the evening.
Always possible, but that’d be a parallel with the NYT city and national editions already mentioned.
Since I happened to be out and about in town this evening, my unsystematic impression is that the “Libor trial” version had become more widespread later on and was certainly the only one visible in stacks at Tube stations at that point.
The natural guess is that they started with the “nursery places” front page, as a non-time-critical “exclusive” story, and then switched to the day’s events in the Libor trial as that story became finalised.
FWIW, comparing two copies, both labelled “West End Final”, revealed that: the “Libor trial” version relegated a compressed version of the nursery places story to the inside page it was already carried on to, completely cut this story on an inside page, shortened this one one the same page and used that freed-up space to carry the inside continuation of the new page one Libor story. Other than those three pages, everything else was identical. The “nursery places” version doesn’t mention the Libor trial at all.
It’d seem an odd piece of demographic targeting to suppose that part of your readership has no interest in the story you’re putting on the front page for the rest. The simpler explanation is surely that it was an unfolding story that they chose to highlight in the later copies of the print run. While pretending that this was still the same “edition”.