The requests trickle in every two or three weeks: A reporter or photographer has made the front page of The New York Times for the first time. Could we honor them with a press plate of that day’s Page One? They go to photographers who captured the defining shot and to editors who nurtured a masterpiece. At The Times, the tradition of presenting Page One plates to journalists for making their first A1 — the plates are also occasionally given for articles of historic impact or to signify other achievements — would seem to go back about 40 years. The plates are made at The Times’s printing plant in College Point, Queens, and delivered by hand to Manhattan, where a point person — often, that’s me, an editor on the print newspaper staff — distributes them to the departments.

Source: New York Times January 17, 2021 09:56 UTC