my passport photo

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by Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros

May 30, 2002 • Today's weblog

NYT sells public domain UFO (?) photos for $375 each: A print of the photo, shot July 16, 1952 by Shel Alpert, a USCG seaman on duty in the Coast Guard Weather Office at the Salem (Mass.) Coast Guard Station, can be seen and bought here (11" x 14" print: $195 ($173.55 for home delivery subscribers); 16" x 20" print: $375 ($333.75 for subscribers).

Military photos belong to the taxpayers; they are in the public domain. Nevertheless, the Times has its watermark on the photo. Slate (How To Tell the New York Times from the Weekly World News) called the Coast Guard historian's office, which confirmed that prints of the flying-saucer photo are available at the cost of reproduction, which is about $15.

But what really upsets Slate is that the Times calls it a "historical photo" and captions it "Flying Saucers in Salem, Mass., 1952" without putting quotes around "flying saucers." Indeed, the page about this incident at Massachusetts MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) relates that Alpert saw "four brilliant lights in the sky."
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