When Bad News Was Printed on Milk Cartons
Before push notifications and AMBER Alerts, dairy farmers doubled as publishers.
Tuesday’s guilty verdict in the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz, whose abduction rattled New York City in 1979, is the latest step toward solving a decades-old mystery.
It’s also a reminder of how dramatically information-distribution channels have evolved in recent decades—specifically the systems used to notify the public about missing children and other emergencies.
Patz was the first missing child to appear on milk cartons nationwide in the United States, in 1984, as part of a national campaign run by
