• Poynter, Friday, January 20, 2012 3:48 PM

Steve Myers marks the 16th anniversary of the New  York Times website -- an important occasion for digital journalism -- with a look back at the site's beginnings, and a timeline of its history.

Myers analyzes a post from 2001, where then-principals of New York Times Digital "recalled the struggles and expectations of publishing on the Web those first few years." Among the points addressed: why the Times didn't charge for content.

And how about this fact from the timeline: when the website broke news of Heath Ledger's death on its City Room blog in 2006, "the post gets 1.78 million page views, at that point the most viewed article in the history of the Times website."

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