Times Insider explains who we’re and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes collectively.
On Jan. 22, 1996, in an article tucked away on Page D7, The New York Occasions introduced the general public launch of its web site.
“The New York Occasions begins publishing each day on the World Broad Internet in the present day, providing readers around the globe instant entry to a lot of the each day newspaper’s contents,” acknowledged the article, by Peter H. Lewis. “The digital newspaper (tackle: http:/www.nytimes.com) is a part of a technique to increase the readership of The Occasions.”
Mr. Lewis had as soon as owned that very URL.
In 1985, the Occasions editors A.M. Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb gathered a process drive, which included Mr. Lewis, to work on a mission referred to as The New York Occasions within the Yr 2000. Mr. Lewis this week shared the small print of the mission and his Occasions work in an e mail, from which a lot of this account is drawn.
Then an editor for the Science part and a private computer systems columnist, Mr. Lewis recalled predicting that by the millennium, Occasions articles could be learn on private laptop screens, in our on-line world.
“I recall Artie dismissing me with a wave,” Mr. Lewis wrote of Mr. Gelb.
Years later, the editor Invoice Stockton, who Mr. Lewis stated championed science and expertise reporting, assigned Mr. Lewis to cowl the “rise of the web.”
Sooner or later, “I requested permission to register an internet area for The Occasions, and was informed no,” Mr. Lewis wrote within the e mail. “A number of of us thought that was shortsighted.”
One other reporter, John Markoff, who had joined The Occasions to cowl laptop networking in 1988, had registered nyt.com a while after beginning his function. (He used it for e mail; he didn’t arrange an internet web page on the area, so individuals acquired an error alert once they tried to go to it.) And Mr. Lewis scooped up nytimes.com round late 1993 or early 1994.
In mid-1995, Mr. Lewis acquired a name from Gordon Thompson, The Occasions’s supervisor of web providers, saying the paper needed to go surfing as “The New York Occasions in Our on-line world” and wanted the nytimes.com area, which had gained out in inside discussions over the shorter nyt.com URL registered by Mr. Markoff. (Per Mr. Markoff’s account, The Occasions thought the three-letter URL could be confused with the web tackle of New York Phone.)
In an e mail on Friday, Mr. Markoff stated that he had registered the nyt.com area earlier than there have been registration charges. However Mr. Lewis paid a $35 price for nytimes.com. Mr. Lewis stated he was completely happy handy the area over — so long as he was reimbursed. He transferred possession of the URL to The Occasions, which activated the website on Jan. 19, 1996, from the Hippodrome office building in Manhattan.
A couple of days later, the web site was reside to the world. Mr. Lewis was not concerned within the launch, although he lined the occasion for the newspaper.
As Mr. Markoff wrote in 2017, he eventually handed over nyt.com, on the situation that he get to maintain his e mail, markoff@nyt.com, which he did till 2016. And in the present day, each URLs ship readers to The Occasions’s house web page.
However there’s one downside: Mr. Lewis stated he by no means obtained his $35 reimbursement.
We’re engaged on that.
