Empire City — This newspaper has now published four hundred and six articles concerning the masked figure known to readers as the Dragonfly, and has illustrated all four hundred and six of them with the same drawing.
The drawing was made in 1998 by a courtroom sketch artist who was not present at the event she was sketching and who has since asked that her name be removed from it. The Times has honored that request. The drawing remains.
Accordingly, and after a meeting of this newspaper's editorial board that ran to eleven hours, the Times is raising its standing reward for one clear, verifiable photograph of the Dragonfly.
“We are not asking for much,” said Desmond R. Quail, who has served as photo editor of this newspaper since 1994 and who has never once photographed the subject. “We are asking for a photograph. Of him. In focus. That is the entire specification.”
Previous submissions have included a photograph of a heron, a photograph of a different heron, a photograph of the number 14 crosstown bus, and, last Thursday, a photograph of a hat resting on a bollard on Pell Street. The hat was submitted eleven separate times by eleven separate readers, all of whom requested the full reward.
Mr. Quail said the hat was “the closest we have come.”
The Times wishes to be clear that it does not endorse, encourage, or accept any responsibility for the methods by which readers obtain photographs, and asks in particular that readers stop climbing the water tower on Lasker Avenue, which is not municipal property and which is not tall enough.