Capsule captures

By: Joe Strupp a New York minute
Life and Times sealed for future

For The New York Times, millennium coverage doesn't mean just covering the dawn of the year 2000. It also means looking ahead to the year 3000.
As part of its effort to ring in the next 1,000 years, the paper that boasts "All The News That's Fit to Print" is planning to lock away some carefully selected elements of news, and non-news, from today's world in a special time capsule (or Times Capsule) for future generations.
In one of its most expansive projects to date, the newspaper is collecting bits and pieces from around the globe that editors believe best represent a slice of life as the world enters the 21st century.
"It will include a lot of authentic voices of our time," said Diane McNulty, the Times' director of community affairs. "It is going to contain a mix of journalism, architecture, arts, and humanity."
Once collected, the items will be placed in a special Times time capsule and put on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York for the first few months of 2000, according to Jack Rosenthal, editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine.
"The idea is to send a message to the year 3000," said Rosenthal. "To tell people then what we think they will want to know about us."
Following the exhibit, the capsule will be locked and remain as a permanent display at the museum until the year 3000, when it will be reopened.
"It will be the addition of a fabulous piece of public art," said Gary Zarr, the museum's senior vice president of communications/marketing. "It will be a perfect compliment."
Rosenthal said the two most important elements of the time capsule were design and content.
For the design, editors launched a contest between January and May asking designers to submit proposals, drawing 48 responses. A winning design has been chosen, but Times officials will not announce the winner until the time capsule exhibit begins Dec. 4. Rosenthal said only that the capsule will be approximately 25 cubic feet.
In deciding what will be placed inside, Times editors have looked at several approaches. The first was an attempt to include items that represent one minute in time from a typical day in New York, Rosenthal said. That minute: 9:09 a.m. on Sept. 9, 1999 (9/9/99).
"The idea is to give people in the future a sense of the ordinary, unexceptional sense of life," Rosenthal said. "Who knows what they will or won't be able to tell from it? But we will have it for them."
To capture examples of life during that minute, Times editors dispatched writers, photographers, and reporters to different areas of New York to collect various impressions of life at the magic moment.
Among the experiences were a visit to the city morgue, a novelist's return to a city high school, photos of a city construction site, a poet's view of the Brooklyn waterfront, and a first-person description of Yankee Stadium 10 hours before game time.
Rosenthal also said the newspaper willcontinue to gain ideas from readers about what should be included right up until the day of the exhibit.
He said memorabilia being considered ranges from hair samples of United Nations ambassadors to a special comic strip about dog walkers from "Doonesbury" artist Garry Trudeau.
"Some of the stuff is weird, some is fiercely intellectual, and some is ordinary," said Rosenthal.
As part of the project, the newspaper is publishing a string of six special editions of The New York Times Magazine, which are averaging 175 pages each ? about 75 pages more than the weekly publication's usual size. The special editions have been so large, they've had to be perfect-bound, a rarity for the Sunday book.
Four of the issues have already been published ? on topics such as the best of the last 1,000 years, women of the millennium, adventures into the unknown, and new views of life. The next issue, set for Oct. 17, focuses on the growth of individuality.

(Editor & Publisher WebSite:http:www.mediainfo.com) [Caption]
(copyright: Editor & Publisher October 9, 1999) [Caption]