Origin of the term "bulldog edition"
A former student has asked a question I can't answer: what was the origin of the term "bulldog edition"?
I recall that at The Globe and Mail in Toronto in the late 1970s and 80s the bulldog edition was the first to be printed. It came out at around 8:30 p.m. (i.e., Tuesday's paper would appear at 8:30 Monday evening). It was sold on the street and sent to out-of-town and out-of-province subscribers but wasn't home delivered. Taxis would line up outside the Globe building to pick up copies and whisk them to local radio and TV stations. I think, but am not sure, that the term was only used in relation to morning papers, not PM daliies.
Does anyone know where this term came from?
All suggestions gratefully received.
1 Reply
Post ReplyFrom the Oxford English Dictionary online:
" 10. bull-dog edition, the earliest edition of a daily or Sunday newspaper. U.S.
1926 Nation 13 Oct. 342/2 This story got into the bull-dog edition of one of the papers before he could finish his midnight rounds.
1934 D. Wilkie Amer. Secret Service Agent iii. 33 That night I took the bulldog edition with my spread to a restaurant where the newspaper men congregated."
From Wikipedia:
"Although the origin of the term is unclear, the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins suggests "the term dates back to New York City’s newspaper wars of the 1890s, when rival papers were competing for morning readers with special editions sold by street vendors very early in the day. These papers were baptized 'bulldogs' presumably because the publishers fought like bulldogs over circulation."[
And that comes from this page:
http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/writing/3413/bulldog-edition/
Sounds plausible!
Grover Furr
Montclair State University