In the In Times Past column, David W. Dunlap explores New York Times history through artifacts housed in the Museum of The Times, for which he is curator.
On Wednesday night, Sept. 20, 2023, the next day’s newspapers were thundering through the mammoth Goss Colorliner presses at the 13-acre printing plant of The New York Times in College Point, Queens.
Even in the blur of freshly printed copies, bold headlines stood out on the front page: “4,000 illegal migrants cross border in one day / Unlawful economy explodes in NYC / Biden still does NOTHING.” Splashed across the top of the page in two-inch type was a single word:
“ANARCHY.”
This was obviously not The New York Times.
Instead, it was The New York Post, one of more than two dozen publications besides The Times that are printed every week at the College Point plant. They include The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, USA Today, AM New York Metro, The New York Amsterdam News, The Chief, Gay City News, Der Yid, El Especialito and Barron’s.
The Times started commercial printing in 2017, by which time the average daily circulation of its own newspaper, 540,000 copies, was less than half what it had been when the College Point plant opened in 1997. (Sunday circulation declined in the same period about 40 percent, to 1.066 million copies.)
Commercial printing contracts allowed The Times, in the words of its 2017 annual report, to “utilize excess printing capacity” at College Point. The company will not disclose what it earns from these contracts, but the business seems robust.