A handful of newspapers, including The New York Times and The Milwaukee Journal, sponsored programs on their own, including delivery of newspapers (sometimes yesterday’s, free of charge) plus curriculum aids and teacher training. Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, wife of the publisher of The New York Times, was unaware that she was becoming the “mother of NIE” when she lent her support to the requests of New York City teachers for delivery of the Times to school classrooms.

As the Times program developed, it concentrated as much on delivery to individual college students as it did to public school classrooms. Later the Times program was offered nationwide, not just in New York. As other newspapers became interested in NIE, The New York Times staff often generously mentored their employees in starting programs. While no official name was yet affixed to the school use of newspapers, the “Living Textbook Program” was sometimes used to describe the newspaper’s fresh curriculum material available on a daily basis.