I was researching some history today and pulled up an article from the (London) Times online archive. The article is dated Monday, April 4, 1955 and contains a detailed report of a soccer match between England and Scotland that had been played the previous Saturday.
In the middle of the article, diagonally across three columns, the words “PRINTED but NOT PUBLISHED” appear. Then, immediately below that line, are the words “NOT to be QUOTED.” They cover two columns of the soccer article and one column of a rugby article.
I have verified elsewhere that the match was played as described in the Times article. Does anyone have any idea why the Times might have posted that legend across the article? I actually would like to quote the article for a book I’m writing, but don’t want to violate any rules of journalism or scholarship of which I am not aware.
Thanks in advance.
I’m not familiar with that exact term, but back in the days of layout and typesetting, there were a lot of stories that made it to the typesetting stage, but were cut or dropped entirely from the published version of the paper (usually for space reasons.) The term I’ve always heard was “overset.” The overset material wasn’t just thrown away. It was usually kept with the story as published and available to reporters who later went back to the story for research or follow-up.
Thanks for the reply. I wouldn’t expect that this article was cut for space, as it’s the only report in the Times of a fairly significant soccer match for the English national team (and the Times was pretty thorough about reporting on all of the other matches during that period), but who knows?
I’m going to set the article aside for now and, if I decide that I need to quote it, I suppose I’ll contact someone from the Times. I can’t imagine there’s any real problem with using it, but it sure makes me curious.
I’d suggest checking with a library or other resource to see if they have that edition of the Times on microfilm (Most U.S. libraries do this) and looking at an actual photocopy of the story to see what was published that day.
It is possible, given the “Not to be Quoted” line, that they are using the technical meaning of “published” in copyright law, where published material may be quoted under ‘fair use’ provisions. In other words, they may have put words on paper with ink, but they did not ‘publish’ it in the way a court would presume another story from the Times to have been published, and thus available to be quoted, subject to the provisions of law.