Journalism professor Frank Thayer wrote in 1954 that a Sunday bulldog edition is often printed as early as the Tuesday preceding the date it bears and is sent to far distant points .
Mencken tried to track down the name but reported, "Origin of bulldog has been discussed at great length but so far as I know the problem has never been solved.
Dare of the reference department, Editor & Publisher, stated in 1940: A good many years ago, when the New York newspapers were fighting for circulation, the World and the American (I think) struggled furiously to get the first morning edition on a train for the west.
"[10] The Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins suggested that 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.
[11]It was a borrowing from nautical terminology, the dog watch being an evening shift, when printers had to work to put out an early edition for a morning paper.
[12] Other suggested derivations of the term: In the early- and mid-20th century, some complaints were made that the publication of news in a bulldog edition was dishonest or led to mistakes.
A "Pippin edition" was issued every Sunday at 6:30 p.m. in advance of the regular bulldog, to carry on its front page the latest baseball scores.
[27] The Detroit Free Press, a morning paper, in 1983 unveiled a bulldog edition that was available at convenience stores and in the newspaper's dispensing boxes in the evening.
Its front page was to be made up "exclusively of headlines, photos and short promotions of stories featured inside the paper.