When The Times Goes Tabloid (Published 2018) (2024)

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The last time The New York Times didn’t print, it missed 88 days of news, including the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel, an outbreak of Legionnaires’ Disease and the entire reign of Pope John Paul I. It was 1978, the year of a major newspaper strike in New York City, and the year eight Times photographers found interim employment in New York City’s parks department.

This Sunday’s special print section, “Scenes Unseen: The Summer of ’78,” features that era and the photographs taken in the parks. It touches on several trends that didn’t last: eight Times photographers’ brief stints shooting for the parks department; the bell-bottoms and tube socks of parkgoers; the decrepit state of city parks in the late 1970s; and the once burgeoning popularity of the tabloid format in the city’s newspapers.

The special section is printed in tabloid format — a rarity for The Times, which prints mostly on its traditional broadsheet. The format, which is half the size of a broadsheet newspaper, often functions as a cost-cutting measure for newspapers around the world. But it can also double as a way to emphasize photos and design work, giving them room to breathe. Sunday’s special section features 42 pictures (out of thousands taken by Times photographers during the strike) of parkgoers sunbathing, barbecuing, playing and the like.

“There is an astounding sense of energy and vibrancy inherent to all 2,924 images in the collection that is often lost in coverage of NYC in the 1970s,” said Rebekah Burgess, a photo archivist at the parks department who digitized the photos. “These technicolor views should be seen large!”

For Sunday’s tabloid, the team of designers and editors was careful to select images that readers would be as invested in as they were. “Everybody who has looked at the pictures over my shoulder for the past month has been like, keep going, show me more,” said Beth Flynn, a deputy photo editor. As more staff members got involved, they even began lobbying for the publication of particular photos. “Everyone had their own favorites,” said Fred Bierman, a design director at The Times. “The pictures all had little nicknames,” including one whose subjects Mr. Bierman called his “grandparents,” which unfortunately didn’t make the final cut.