Gay Talese in 2006, (Image by David Shankbone.)

During a 2009 interview with the Paris Review, New Journalism legend Gay Talese recalls how he published his first article at the New York Times. An excerpt (Thanks Longform):

“The copy boys had to go at night to Times Square to wait for the arrival of the late-evening tabloids, which we’d deliver to the editors so that they could see what the other newspapers were reporting. While I was waiting in Times Square one night I became transfixed by that electronic news ticker scrolling around three of the sides of the old New York Times building. Fifteen thousand lightbulbs spelling out that day’s headlines, in five-foot-high letters. I wondered, How do they do that?

"Fifteen thousand lightbulbs spelling out that day’s headlines, in five-foot-high letters. I wondered, How do they do that?"

After I delivered the papers I had some free time, so I went back to the old Times building and I climbed the stairs until I found a door open on the fourth floor. Behind it was a man standing on a ladder, holding what looked like an accordion. I said, Excuse me, I’m a copy boy, and I was just wondering, what are you doing? He said, I’m doing the headlines. I asked him how he did it. He said, They call me and read me the headlines, and I type them into this device here, and it makes the bulbs light up in the right way. He said he’d been working there for twenty-five years. I asked him what his first big headline was, and he said, Oh, election night, 1928. HERBERT HOOVER BEATS AL SMITH. I asked him if I could come back with a notepad and interview him about his career and some of the famous headlines he’d written, and he agreed.

One of the good things about being a copy boy was that you got to know a lot of people on the staff. Especially if you were polite. I had good manners, thanks to growing up in the store—a reverential attitude toward the customer. So I approached Meyer Berger, one of the famous reporters on the paper at the time and a wonderful, generous man. He said I could write up the piece on his typewriter and show it to him. I did, and he liked it. He showed it to his editor, and soon it was published, without a byline, on the editorial page.”