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The Sun also rises: a new broadsheet in New York City thinks it can take a bite out of the Big Apple - Media - New York Sun - Brief Article
Insight on the News, May 6, 2002 by Benjamin Polen
If there's one city that could use some good news, it's New York City. And it may just get some April 16, when a broadsheet debuts to give the New York Times, the Daily News and the New York Post a run for their ad dollars.
A self-professed organ for reform, the New York Sun aims to shed light on the city's notorious backroom politics and vows to provide "honest, objective news," although it will speak in conservative tones on its editorial page. Already, the Sun has announced its support of school choice and lower taxes, both hot-button issues in New York City. On foreign affairs, the paper will be strongly pro-Israel, if the past positions of its editor, Seth Lipsky, 55, are any guide. Lipsky is the former editor and president of the weekly Forward (successor of the Jewish Daily Forward).
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Lipsky's sidekick, 29-year-old Managing Editor Ira Stoll, also worked at Forward, but he has earned more notoriety as founder and editor of Smartertimes.com, a Website devoted to exposing biased reporting at the Times. The site managed to embarrass the Old Gray Lady on numerous occasions, and also helped attract like-minded individuals to the Sun. The paper will be staffed by journalists with experience at the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Morning News and Forbes magazine -- as well as a few Times expatriates.
Jonathan Mahler, another veteran of Forward and a founding editor of the defunct Talk magazine, will write a sports column for the Sun. Richard Brookhiser, a biographer and senior editor with the National Review, will be lead writer on a column called "The Historian," which will illuminate current events through the lens of history. News-desk jockeys include Seth Mnookin, a veteran of the Palm Beach Post, Inside.com and Forward, and Ben Smith, formerly with the Wall Street Journal Europe. William Kummel, a veteran newspaper financial reporter who has worked at Newsday and the Times, will head the business desk. Robert Messenger, who comes by way of the New Criterion, will edit arts and culture.
In addition, the paper will feature a bridge column cowritten by James Cayne, chairman of Bear Stearns and a 13-time U.S. national bridge champion, and Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, who coached the Israeli national bridge team in the mid-seventies. The Sun also will have a chess column by Boris Gulko, the only player ever to win U.S. and U.S.S.R. championships.
At 50 cents for nine editorial pages, the Sun will be a luxury item, even with a four-color front page. Ad rates open at $4,000 for a full page in a press run of 60,000. The paper's investors include publishing magnate Conrad Black, whose company, Hollinger International, publishes the Jerusalem Post, the Chicago Sun-Times and London's Daily Telegraph. Black failed in a bid to acquire New York's Daily News in 1993 and the New York Observer, a weekly, in 1999. With the Sun, he finally has found a way to take on rival Rupert Murdoch, who owns the New York Post.
Other backers include Charles Brunie, former chairman of the libertarian Manhattan Institute; Bruce Kovner, chairman of the Juilliard School and the School Choice Scholarship Foundation; Michael Steinhardt, chairman of Tel Aviv University; and Richard Gilder, founder of the Club for Growth, an organization that advocates limited government and lower taxes. Together, they have bellied up a reported $15 million in startup capital (some put the figure as high as $25 million), a pittance in New York's ultracompetitive media market.
Still, Sun investors and staff are confident they can carve out a market for themselves in a city that already boasts seven dailies (including two Spanish-language papers and the Wall Street Journal), five weeklies (the Observer, the New York Press, the Village Voice, the New Yorker and New York magazine) and numerous publications covering the city's five boroughs.
But even this lineup, impressive in a world dominated by electronic media, can't compare with the glory days of New York publishing, when as many as 17 dailies, from the Brooklyn Eagle to the famous Herald Tribune, hawked their words.
The Sun's current offices, a stone's throw from City Hall on a street once known as "Newspaper Row," are close to those of its namesake, founded in 1833. A staid paper with a well-regarded reputation for journalistic integrity, the original Sun now is remembered as the paper which, in 1897, published a letter from 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon, who wanted to know if there really was a Santa Claus. "Yes, Virginia," the editors replied, "there is a Santa Claus."
The first Sun enjoyed a long run, but its fortunes waned as the 20th century wore on. In 1950, faced with rising competition from television, it shut down its presses, a harbinger of future closings across the United States. The last 20 years have seen a tidal wave of consolidation, with publishers such as Gannett and Knight-Ridder marking a high-water crest in acquisitions.
The Sun faces an uphill battle, according to one industry analyst. "The history of startups in cities where there are already established dailies is a grim one. There haven't been any successes," says John Morton, whose company, Morton Research, tracks the newspaper business. Even Black's deep pockets may not be enough. "There have been people who thought they were rich until they bought a money-losing newspaper," adds Morton.
