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Inside 'The Morgue' at The New York Times

November 30, 2025 • 25m

Summary

⏱️ 7 min read

Overview

A fascinating tour of the New York Times morgue, a massive archive deep beneath Midtown Manhattan containing millions of newspaper clippings and historical documents dating back to the 1870s. Rachel Abrams returns a long-overdue book to Jeff Roth, the sole keeper of this 700,000-pound collection, who shares stories about the archive's history, its crucial role in journalism, and how the internet has changed how reporters use this treasure trove of information.

Introduction: The Overdue Book

Rachel Abrams embarks on a mission to the New York Times morgue, a place she's never visited despite working at the Times for 12 years. She's carrying a book about Ralph Lauren that she borrowed nearly a decade ago and never returned. The morgue, run by Jeff Roth, is an archive of newspaper clippings and books that reporters have relied on for decades, located deep beneath Midtown Manhattan.

  • Rachel borrowed a book about Ralph Lauren approximately 12 years ago and never returned it despite Jeff's explicit warning
  • The morgue is located deep underground, three levels down in the old Herald Tribune building
" Jeff, who we're going to go meet, who runs the morgue, told me explicitly, like, you have to return this. And I never did. "

Discovery of Historical Treasures

The team discovers boxes recently returned from the University of Texas containing 1,300 boxes of historical clippings. Jeff demonstrates the archive's contents by randomly pulling out clips, including stories from 1950 printed on special rag edition paper made from cloth. One particularly moving story tells of a telephone operator who saved a woman's life, demonstrating the human stories preserved in the archive that wouldn't be found on the internet.

  • 1,300 boxes were sent to University of Texas 27 years ago and recently brought back, though Jeff originally only had room for 900
  • The rag edition of the Times was printed on fine paper made from linen that has lasted remarkably well
  • A 1950 story about telephone operator Pauline Mindscow saving a life by hearing a groan over the wire exists only in the morgue, killed after first edition
" If you looked for this, let's say the family looked for it on the Internet, they wouldn't find it because it was killed after the first edition. "

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