Times Insider shares insights into how we work at The New York Times. In this article, Lew Serviss, an assistant editor on the Print News Hub, describes how an enterprising team of Times staffers worked into the wee hours of Saturday morning to accomplish a feat with all the drama and suspense of an epic boxing match.
The life of Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champion of so much more than the world of boxing — a towering figure of a generation — was coming to an end.
The New York Times rushed to complete a report that took full measure of the man known as The Greatest. An all-encompassing, 4,000-wordobituary by Robert Lipsyte, who had covered Ali since 1964, was the centerpiece of the package. A second story had been written years in advance by Dave Anderson, the longtime Sports of The Times columnist.
But when would the time come to tell the world?
Friday, 4:30 p.m.
Word that Ali was on life support kicked the planning into high gear on Friday afternoon, just after the daily 4:30 news meeting. A strategy session convened by Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, resulted in a third story, by the columnist George Vecsey, and various online additions and stories for the follow-up to the passing of Ali.
Publishing on the web required preparation of articles, graphics, slide shows, video and other material, but unveiling the coverage online could be accomplished from a keyboard in the Times newsroom.
Publishing in print would mean designing newspaper pages, making plates for the presses, organizing delivery routes, driving trucks and dropping copies on doorsteps. All this activity requires a timetable so that the end result is a paper delivered in time for breakfast, not lunch. How would The Times be able to present the Ali package in print? How widely would it be distributed? That would depend on when the news broke.
The obituary — which has its own Times Insider back story — was sent to the Sports copy desk in 2014, when Ali’s health added urgency to the process that Bill McDonald, The Times’s obituaries editor, and his staff undertake to ensure that a momentous passing is captured smartly and completely. It was edited by Zach Johnk and Sean Ernst, who wrote the headline that went on the web: “A Titan of Boxing and the 20th Century.”
How the Ali package could go into the paper — how many pages could run, how the photos could be displayed — depended on what time of day the news came in.
“I’ve been at The Times as a Sports art director for 21 years, but discussions of how to visually handle Ali’s obituary in print have been ongoing for almost as long,” said Wayne Kamidoi.
A design for three Sports pages for Ali was roughed out two years ago by Mr. Kamidoi and another designer, Fred Bierman. The front page of the Sports section — the “dress” page — would consist of an enormous photo of Ali in his prime (left) by the legendary Times sports photographer Barton Silverman, with the start of the Anderson column. An obituary starting on Page One would be continued on two facing pages with an enormous photo of Ali in triumph (below) after being declared the victor over Sonny Liston in 1964. The photo was designed to run across two pages and would need to be a center spread — a continuous sheet of paper rather than two facing pages with a fold.
Friday, 5 p.m.
But planning the press configuration is a complex process. Tom Jolly, one of the associate masthead editors, reviewed the options with a cluster of news desk editors shortly after 5 p.m. “If Ali died before 7, we would add pages to the overall newspaper,” said Denise Fuhs, the chief of the Print News Hub. “If it happened after 7, we would have to throw out at least four pages of news to make room.” More important, once it was too late to drastically rearrange the newspaper, the center-spread photo would not be possible.
“After creative director Tom Bodkin designed Saturday’s A1,” Mr. Kamidoi said, “he immediately drew the front-page plan if Ali died. Just in case.” The design called for a deep four-column box with an intense portrait (left) by Gordon Parks, the noted photographer and film director. Mr. Kamidoi and another art director, Lee Yarosh, designed two more inside pages. The package was taking shape.
With work proceeding and anticipation building, I alerted Michael Connors, the managing director for production at The Times’s printing plant in College Point, Queens, where all the New York edition papers are printed. Just as the newsroom had to plan coverage and assemble words and images into designed pages, the plant had to organize its phases of production: making each page into plates for the presses, moving Volkswagen-size rolls of newsprint, tending presses, processing bundles of papers coming off them.
We discussed what our options would be to maximize the number of papers printed if we confirmed Ali’s death in time for the first New York edition or even later. Because it was a Friday night, two factors were in our favor: People did not expect delivery quite as early on a Saturday, and the Saturday press run is larger than that of any other day except Sunday. Mr. Connors contacted departments throughout the cavernous printing plant, “alerting them to Ali’s grave condition, to the fact that we needed to be flexible and ready to change direction immediately, and to our obligation to get out as many copies with the news included as possible.”
Alan Robertazzi, the editor of newspaper production, sent a similar alert to coordinators of the 27 national print sites for The Times.
Friday, 7 p.m.
Preparations continued as the 7 p.m. window for adding pages to the paper closed. Pete Blair, the head of the Sports copy desk, gave another look at the Anderson column, which had been copy-edited in 2014 by Adrienne Morris. Another copy editor, Eric Morse, reviewed a 20-minute video and scrambled to edit a timeline and a slide show before starting on the dozen or so captions for the print obit. Greg McElvain dropped everything he was doing to edit the newly written Vecsey column.
Mr. Bierman rebuilt the centerspread layout so that the photo of Ali’s jubilation in the ring after the Liston fight was contained on one of two facing pages. (The original two-page design appeared in Sunday’s Sports section.)
Friday, 9:30 p.m.
The first National edition closed with no Ali update, but at 9:30 Steve Kenny, the night News Hub chief, pulled together another cluster of news editors. He had just received an email from John Eligon, a National correspondent who had covered boxing for Sports and was assigned to keep tabs on Ali. Mr. Eligon alerted him that a statement was expected soon, according to a family spokesman he had talked to. “I asked if that meant we should have our stories ready,” Mr. Eligon’s email read, “and he said yes.”
The news editors discussed the options available if confirmation came just in time for the first New York edition. Mr. Kenny consulted with Mr. Baquet, who endorsed a plan to put a condensed version of the obituary in the lead position on Page One, move another story inside the paper and then work to get the full package into later editions. The room grew quiet as work continued.
Friday, 10:30 p.m.
About an hour later, Joe Drape, a Sports reporter, had reached another source, Mr. Kenny reported. The source had told Mr. Drape “that the end was near, and that it was hour by hour.” DEFCON 2, I thought, recalling the 1983 thriller “WarGames,” in which a couple of teenagers unwittingly put the United States military on one of its highest defense readiness alerts.
With the first New York edition closed, Ms. Fuhs identified a new issue: The package we hoped to run for the second National and New York editions consisted of a Page One design that dropped two stories for the Parks photo and Lipsyte obit, 52 years in the making. It included five Ali pages in Sports. The remaining three pages in Sports would need to be reworked to consolidate the day’s sporting news. A page in the Business section and five in the National section would have to be revised — stories trimmed, headlines and captions rewritten — to accommodate the changes on A1. Finally, because stories were moving across the paper, the A2 index page would have to be updated.
A total of 16 impacted pages. An ambitious undertaking with time growing shorter and shorter.
Ms. Fuhs called together Carl Nelson, the night Sports editor; Jay Schreiber, deputy Sports editor; Mr. Blair, and Tom Coffey, who was filling in as the weekend Sports editor.
“Can we stand the section for the second editions?” she asked, meaning skip any updates at all. The Sports editors agreed that there were no must-run events — no N.B.A. finals, no Stanley Cup final game.
“What if we started setting up Ali now so if it happens anytime from 11 on, we’ll be able to run the whole package,” Ms. Fuhs suggested. The entire early-edition Sports section would be reworked — with the Ali designs that Mr. Kamidoi and Mr. Bierman had created. We would be in a position to send pages to the presses quickly if we got the call. Molly Bedford, a news designer on the daily Sports section had had a similar thought, as had Mr. Blair. Mr. Kenny and I agreed that it would push us farther ahead, and that if no word came before it was too late to print any papers with Ali news, we could use the pages for the Sunday paper or beyond.
“Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop smoking,” Mr. Coffey said, imitating Lloyd Bridges in the disaster spoof “Airplane!”
“We moved the pre-designed pages onto the live pages and condensed the remaining Sports section into three pages, removing several stories,” Ms. Bedford said, “allowing extra time for the copy desk to cut the general sports stories, rewrite hardware and get started on the Ali content.” Even so, if the green light came, Tommy Rivas, the A1 page designer, would have a sprint to the finish, since he could not begin his rebuild until Page One updated for the second editions.
Friday, 11:30 p.m.
The newsroom pressed ahead with eyes on the clock. After midnight, there would be little chance of touching many National edition papers, and hitting New York papers was getting tricky. At 11:30, as I monitored the College Point press run — still well over 200,000 papers to go — I texted Mr. Connors: “Nothing yet, Mike, but we’re ready to go quickly.”
He replied: “O.K., Lew. Same here.” At sprawling College Point — so huge that workers use bicycles to get from one end to another — the operations manager, Ernie Booth, coordinated among departments to help stretch out the press run.
Soon we were in for the second edition, and still no word. This wasn’t to be the night, I thought. Muhammad Ali was, in every sense of the word, a fighter, after all.
With a significant number of papers still to be printed, we focused on the New York postscript — the last opportunity to make changes. There was just one request, for a single Sports page to update the United States-Colombia match in the Copa América soccer tournament. Once completed — the deadline was 12:30 a.m. — we would be done for the night, although I was not about to declare the “good night,” shutting down the newsroom, until we had exhausted the possibility of getting late news onto the presses.
Saturday, 12:20 a.m.
At 12:20 I refreshed the trending hashtag I had been monitoring on Twitter: #MuhammadAli. My eyes immediately fell on a post in the middle of the screen, by a Times political reporter, Yamiche Alcindor: “Wow. NBC News is reporting #MuhammadAli has died.” I felt like theRoy Scheider character in “Jaws,” watching a shark attack swimmers as a camera on a dolly pushed toward him, Hitchcock-style.
I told Mr. Kenny, whose eyes widened as he reached for the phone to call Mr. Nelson in Sports. “NBC reporting he’s dead,” I texted to Mr. Connors. “Hang on.” In minutes, Mr. Eligon had confirmed with the family spokesman that Ali had died, and we were off to the races. Justin Porter on the digital desk sent out a news alert at 12:44. The digital news team, led by Mr. Kenny and Dave Renard, a news editor, quickly published to the web a banquet of news: the obituary, the two columns, a 20-minute video, a slide show, a timeline and a compilation of Ali quotations.
Saturday, 12:44 a.m.
I called Mr. Connors, this time with confirmation. “O.K., Lew,” he said. “How many pages?” A bunch, I said. “Sixteen.” Moments later, I saw that the four presses printing the Saturday paper at College Point had stopped. I contacted Robert Barnes, the coordinator for National print sites. He emailed that all the sites except for one — Los Angeles — had finished their allotted runs. But Los Angeles, which had 7,000 papers yet to print, would wait for our pages.
Mr. Rivas began the extensive revision of Page One. Mr. Ernst, who two years earlier had taken the early read of the Ali obit, prepared for substantial changes in the National section, and Maya Salam on the Business desk waited to begin work on a revised jobs article that had changed shape on A1. On the news design desk, Andy Braford, Tim Bralczyk, John Grippe, Elena Gustines and Frank Reneau worked to revise and complete pages. Penn Bullock searched to see where stories had landed, to update the A2 index.
Sports pages were clearing quickly. Ms. Fuhs’s plan to “stand” the Sports section for the second edition had given us a big advantage. But just as there is always a last-minute hitch in cliffhanger movies, our new and at times temperamental content management system threw up some roadblocks. Three dogged news technology specialists — Michael Kane, Caitlin Lovinger and Chris Tatti — got to work as the minutes ticked by. At last, Mr. Grippe set the last of the 32 pages — one 16-page set was for Los Angeles and 7,000 lucky readers — at 1:51 a.m.
Saturday, 1:51 a.m.
The presses were still stopped. The newsroom was done, but now the work had moved on to platemaking at College Point. Each page the newsroom had sent had to pass through a platemaking line until a plate emerged that would go on the presses. Color pages (we had sent two) each needed four plates for color separation. Mike Cassidy, the assistant foreman, shepherded all the plates through, and the pressroom got the presses replated and restarted, while the delivery department made up lost time in getting papers onto trucks and on their way.
Half of the New York edition — nearly 200,000 papers — carried the obituary that Robert Lipsyte had started 52 years earlier.
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