Bulldog edition refers to an early edition in the press cycle of a newspaper or other print publications.
For instance, the Sunday New York Times publishes its bulldog edition, about 100,000 copies, for distribution around the country, at about noon on Saturday. Other large metropolitan newspapers in the United States may offer a local Sunday bulldog edition for delivery to subscribers and available at newsstands and in racks on Friday or Saturday.
Although the origin of the term is unclear, the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins suggests "the term dates back to New York City’s newspaper wars of the 1890s, when rival papers were competing for morning readers with special editions sold by street vendors very early in the day. These papers were baptized 'bulldogs' presumably because the publishers fought like bulldogs over circulation."
In the movie Citizen Kane, Kane tells Susan, “The bulldog's just gone to press,” to which Susan sarcastically replies, "Well, hurray for the bulldog!"
Famous quotes containing the word edition:
“Books have their destinies like men. And their fates, as made by generations of readers, are very different from the destinies foreseen for them by their authors. Gulliver’s Travels, with a minimum of expurgation, has become a children’s book; a new illustrated edition is produced every Christmas. That’s what comes of saying profound things about humanity in terms of a fairy story.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)