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Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at The New York Times. In this piece, Daniel Victor, a reporter on the Express Team, discusses his one-word story.
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“No.”
That one word was the entirety of an article I wrote last September. I haven’t scoured The Times’s archives, but I feel comfortable calling it the shortest article in the history of The New York Times.
I mean, it’d be pretty hard to beat.
To understand how it came about, you should first understand what Express does. We’re a small team focused on breaking news and other stories that we think will appeal primarily to our digital audience, regardless of the subject area. We’ve been encouraged to experiment with voice, tone and story format to see what resonates with our online readers. We do a lot of serious news, but we also have the freedom to occasionally get a little weird.
The “No” story started when The Times’s newsroom was struck by an email thread that went off the rails. The first email, about an upcoming ad campaign, was sent at 12:04 p.m. by someone who works in product, and for some reason it went out to what seemed like the entire company. Then the reply-all responses began: “Please remove me from this list,” “Off please,” “Remove me,” “I don’t belong in here,” et cetera.
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