The day they invented Frank Bruni

Jason Kottke's post from September 19th, Gems from the Archive of the New York Times, is an internet classic. So obvious, so effortless, and yet so revelatory.

Among the gems from the now-freely-accessible archives:

- The first mention of the World Wide Web in the Times in February 1993. According to the article, the purpose of the web is "[to make] available physicists' research from many locations". Also notable are this John Markoff article on the internet being overwhelmed by heavy traffic and growth...in 1993, and a piece, also by Markoff, on the Mosaic web browser.

- Early report of Lincoln's assassination..."The President Still Alive at Last Accounts".

- A report on Custer's Last Stand a couple of weeks after the occurance (I couldn't find anything sooner). The coverage of Native Americans is notable for the racism, both thinly veiled and overt, displayed in the writing, e.g. a story from September 1872 titled The Hostile Savages.

But the next day Kottke topped even that post with a perfect miniature which begins as follows:

While poking around in the newly opened archives of the New York Times yesterday, I stumbled upon an article called How We Dine (full text in PDF) from January 1, 1859. I'm not well versed in the history of food criticism, but I believe this is perhaps the first restaurant review to appear in the Times and that the unnamed gentleman who wrote it (the byline is "by the Strong-Minded Reporter of the Times") is the progenitor of the paper's later reviewers like Ruth Reichl, Mimi Sheraton, and Frank Bruni.

The article starts off with a directive from the editor-in-chief to "go and dine":

"Very well," replied the editor-in-chief. "Dine somewhere else to-day and somewhere else to-morrow. I wish you to dine everywhere, -- from the Astor House Restaurant to the smallest description of dining saloon in the City, in order that you may furnish an account of all these places. The cashier will pay your expenses."

Read the whole thing (on Kottke's site) and wonder at this piece of history laid bare: the invention of the restaurant review, and with it the occult power that the New York Times exercises over the life of the city between seven and ten pm.

And here, in passing, proof of why the New York Times is right to have veered finally (well, recently, anyhow) towards a free-content model. They have reams, tons, terabytes of this stuff squirrelled away, and who knew or cared until now? We're going to love (and quote) them ten times as much.