The Press: Coverage in Depth

On the surface, the idea seemed, well, monstrous. But the deeper the New York Times looked into it, the more irresistible the venture became: the Times should go after the Loch Ness Monster.

Getting exclusive stories through the sponsorship of scientific investigations —and related feats of derring-do—is a grand but largely abandoned tradition of U.S. journalism.* It was the New York Herald that sent Henry M. Stanley on one of history's most celebrated man hunts ("Find Livingstone!" ordered Publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr. in 1869). The Times backed Commander Robert E. Peary in the...