The Day After The Election, Newspapers Were Suddenly Hot

Newspapers may be fading relics of another time, but the day after the election, everyone wanted them.

From New York to Los Angeles, and just about everywhere in between, newspapers printed millions of extra copies to meet the demand from customers who wanted keepsake editions proclaiming the news that Barack Obama had been elected the nation's first black president.

The New York Times carried a large ad this week offering original copies of the Wednesday paper for $14.95. But on eBay, they were fetching hundreds more.

The Washington Post printed 350,000 extra copies of the election edition Wednesday, selling them for $1.50 each. Obama's hometown papers, The Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, both printed hundreds of thousands of extras. The Tribune had planned to print just 20,000 additional copies, but ended up printing 10 times that many to meet the demand.

In smaller markets, Florida's Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale each printed an additional 12,000 copies. The Hartford Courant printed 15,000 additional copies, the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., added 12,000, and The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., added 3,500. One man snapped up 10,000 copies of the Bellingham Herald in Washington state, hoping to hawk them for a profit.

The news magazines also benefited. Time and Newsweek both published special election issues, and both increased their press runs by 100,000.

But probably the biggest increase was at USA Today, which upped its normal press run of 2 million by 500,000 additional copies. The paper was selling more online.

Why the sudden rush on old-fashioned ink-stained newsprint? "You can't put a computer screen into a scrapbook," office manager Joyce Mutcherson-Ridley told the Post.

Editor & Publisher columnist Joe Strupp quipped: "Maybe we need an historic election at least once a month."

Wednesday's front pages - from newspapers around the country and the world - can be seen online at the Newseum's website.

Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images