• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, February 13, 2013

The National Geographic Channel is riding the wave of interest in all things Lincoln-related with a new “factual drama,” “Killing Lincoln."

The New York Times Web site is helping them drum up interest for the original production with a custom advertising unit that incorporates historic content drawn from the NYT’s own archives, available digitally via its TimesMachine platform.
 
The custom unit for “Killing Lincoln” consists of a half-page with overlay showing the front page of The New York Times from April 15, 1865, with the historic headline “President Lincoln Shot by an Assassin.”

Readers who interact with the ad unit can explore other NYT front pages from the era via TimesMachine, providing a better sense of the aftermath of the event, as well as view a trailer and watch behind-the-scenes footage from the film.
 
The campaign, organized by mediahub/Mullen, includes a home page takeover planned for Feb. 16, the day before “Killing Lincoln” is scheduled to air.
 
The TimesMachine archive includes every issue of The New-York Daily Times, as it was known when it debuted on Sept. 18, 1851, and The New York Times, as it was later known, through Dec. 30, 1922. Spanning historic eras including the Civil War, the Gilded Age and the First World War, the TimesMachine archive provides insights into events of the day, as well as public opinion and attitudes, cultural trends and fashions, and the changing face of business and advertising.
 
In addition to famous front pages, the NYT archive also includes a number of articles notable for never being published. Back in 2006, the newspaper commemorated the 55th anniversary of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by publishing a series of articles about the event that were written in 1942, but then censored by the U.S. government under wartime rules. The 15,000-word series by Times reporter Robert Trumbull detailed the Herculean project to salvage four battleships sunk by Japanese bombs and torpedoes.

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