Picking Up the Flag of the Sun

One day in April 2002, the managing editor of what was about to become The New York Sun, Ira Stoll, sat down with a reporter for the paper, Ben Smith, for an interview with New York’s new mayor. When conversation turned to the proposed Second Avenue subway line, Mr. Stoll inquired whether the city might sell the subways to a private entrepreneur. The mayor, Michael Bloomberg, responded with the question, “What are you smoking?”That question inspired the headline over the Sun’s first editorial, announcing the paper’s penchants for free markets and private enterprise. “We have chosen to pick up the flag of the Sun,” the editorial said, in a reference to the famed New York broadsheet that folded in 1950 after more than a century of publication, “because it reminds us more than that of any other newspaper of the importance of guiding principle. For more than a century, the Sun stood for constitutional government, equality under the law, free enterprise, and the American idea.”That editorial, “What We’re Smoking,” was followed by another, “The War Against the Jews,” pegged to a vast demonstration on the Washington Mall and illuminating another theme that animated the seven years of the Sun. Whereas the original New York Sun uncovered the mob’s involvement with shipping that became the basis for “On the Waterfront,” the new Sun helped crack corruption at the United Nations and disclosed student complaints of bias against Israel at Columbia University.Always a strong editorial voice for New Yorkers and the freedom to pursue their dreams, the paper’s op-ed pages became a soapbox for thinkers, reformers, and columnists such as, to name but a few, James Q. Wilson, James Grant, Errol Louis, David Twersky, Hillel Halkin, John McWhorter, Seth Gitell, Kenneth Blackwell, William F. Buckley Jr., Cal Thomas, Nibras Kazimi, Rabbi Avi Shafran, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., Anne Applebaum, Jacob Gershman, Amity Shlaes, John Stossel, David Shribman, Thomas Bray, and the education critic Andrew Wolf.Yet it was not only politics and commentary that animated the paper, but also its arts coverage, which developed into a freestanding section that many felt was the best in the city, and featured some of the finest critics writing in America today, including Adam Kirsch, an associate editor of the paper who wrote on literature, Lance Esplund and David Cohen on art, Jay Nordlinger and Fred Kirshnit on classical music, Eric Grode on theater, Joel Lobenthal on dance, Gary Giddins and Brendan Bernhard on popular culture, and Bruce Bennett on film.The Sun grew from its slim first issues, in part on the encouragement of Conrad Black, whose Hollinger International was an investor in the paper at the beginning, and who envisioned the paper as a stand-alone first-read for sophisticated New Yorkers. It came to encompass a new kind of sports page, with highly analytical coverage exemplified by Tim Marchman on baseball, John Hollinger on basketball, and Tom Perrotta on tennis. When the new online sports editor of the Wall Street Journal, Adam Thompson, was named, he cited the Sun as having the kind of coverage he wanted to emulate, for what he called a “thinking man’s sports site.” Business and real estate coverage was also beefed up and included columns by Dan Dorfman, Liz Peek, and Michael Stoler under the direction of David Lombino and then Julie Satow.Another area in which the Sun broke ground was in its coverage of the myriad events around town designed to raise money for the charities that are such an important part of the city. The paper’s society editor, Amanda Gordon, became enough of a celebrity herself, as she moved from event to event, that when a party was thrown in honor of the fifth year of her column, “Out and About,” scores of people she covered showed up to express their appreciation.When the paper was launched, a reporter of the Washington Post had asked its editor, Seth Lipsky, how the Sun would be able to compete against the New York Times, which had “eighty reporters” on its metropolitan desk. The Times might have 80 reporters, he replied, but they missed the story that taxes are too high, that the reason there is an apartment shortage is rent control, and that vouchers are a movement to rescue minority children from failing schools.The original New York Sun was founded in 1833 by Benjamin Day. The paper sold for a penny and represented the start of the modern, mass-circulation newspaper business. The Sun was built to greatness from the 1860s by Charles Dana, an editor who was fired by Horace Greeley’s Tribune for being not only willing but eager to fight a war against slavery. Dana was named by Lincoln assistant secretary of war and rode with U.S. Grant before returning to New York to acquire and edit the Sun.The original Sun’s most famous monument was the “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” letter. The paper was published until January 3, 1950, when it was sold to Roy Howard, who merged it into what became the World-Telegram and Sun. That newspaper became a casualty of the newspaper die-off of the 1960s, which left the city with three general-interest, citywide dailies: the News, the Post, and the Times.Flash-forward to September 11, 2001, when Mr. Lipsky, who together with Mr. Stoll had spent the last year raising capital to launch a new daily, was setting out from breakfast in Midtown to a meeting at a law firm where the final papers would be signed. As he left breakfast, his secretary called from the New Jersey Turnpike to say that if he was thinking of going later to his office at the Wall Street Journal, he shouldn’t, for a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.Mr. Lipsky later said that he was humbled and inspired by the fact that, for all the horror of the day and the chaos that followed, not one of the investors who had committed capital to the Sun asked to pull out. Less than six months later, on April 16, 2002, the first issue of the newspaper hit the streets, 18 pages priced at 50 cents. The lead story was an interview with Ahmad Chalabi, identified as “the leader of the free, democratic Iraqi opposition.” Mr. Chalabi warned that the Bush administration’s planning for a post-invasion Iraq was “abysmal.”The interview, a major scoop, was often cited by those who suggested the Sun was an uncritical supporter of the decision to go to ground in Iraq.More harbingers from that first front page: an interview with Lech Walesa by Peggy Noonan; political reporting by Ben Smith at City Hall and William F. Hammond Jr. in Albany; a quirky feature on big shots in business who refused to part with their Rolodexes despite the digital age, and an Associated Press dispatch headlined “Ant Colony Largest Ever / 3,600 Miles of Cooperation.” Mr. Lipsky wanted to have a quirky animal story tucked somewhere on page 1 each day but soon, according to one wag, came to his senses, and the feature was dropped.Inside was the start of what would become, under a succession of editors starting with Robert Messenger and then Robert Asahina and Pia Catton, the liveliest art section in New York, written by a combination of long-established critics and rising young voices. Mr. Lipsky credited the paper’s publisher between 2005 and 2008, Ronald Weintraub, with the decision to make Arts+ a separate, daily section. The decision was greeted with enthusiasm by both readers and advertisers.There was also a robust listings section, and the first of the new series of Sun crosswords. Beside the puzzle in the first issue was the solution to the previous New York Sun crossword, from January 4, 1950. Innovative and playful, the Sun’s new crosswords, edited by Peter Gordon, were anthologized in bound collections and recognized in an article in the Weekly Standard as the best puzzles in the country.Inside the Chambers Street newsroom, just a block from the original Sun offices across from City Hall, spirits ran high. A tiny crew — a handful of reporters and one photographer at the start — cranked out the paper every weekday. Prospective news assistants were asked if they had driver’s licenses because, the managing editor explained, they might be called upon to drive the newspaper’s delivery trucks. The paper marked the 150th anniversary of the decision to create Central Park with an editorial correcting the original New York Sun’s opposition to the plan.Several of the staff had followed Mr. Lipsky to the Sun from the Forward, an English-language version that Mr. Lipsky had launched in 1990 of the venerable Yiddish paper.The Sun’s offices, in an 1857 cast-iron building on the National Register of Historic Places, often had amenities harking back to the 19th century. Desk fans in the summer gave way to space heaters in winter. A Sun graphic designer recalled being offered a dram of whiskey for warmth at a particularly frigid editorial meeting by none other than Sir Harold Evans.Sir Harold, former editor of the Times of London and husband to Sun columnist Tina Brown, did a two-week stint as guest editor of the Sun.He had made the acquaintance of the editor when he stopped by the offices as the paper was preparing to launch and made what Mr. Lipsky calls “a memorable act of journalistic one-upsmanship.” Mr. Lipsky had escorted Mr. Evans into the newsroom to see the mock-ups of the front page, which were hanging on the wall at the far end of the newsroom. As he approached, Sir Harold suddenly stopped, and, from about 2 yards away, exclaimed: “I see you’re using Times Europa for your body type.” Mr. Lipsky nodded and said, “I’ve always liked that font.” Replied Sir Harold: “I was chairman of the committee that designed that font.” Eventually, the Sun went to a more modern design, created by a famed newspaper designer, Lucie Lacava, and implemented by art director Kristofer Porter, that used the Chronicle family of type for headlines and body and Vonnes for sans serif headlines.Unlike most newspaper offices, the Sun’s eschewed cubicles for metal tables. The motive may have been financial, but the effect was to increase sight lines and interactions among the youngish staff. As the Sun’s circulation rose, eventually in a combination of paid, controlled, and sampled copies, to about 100,000 copies daily, a parade of dignitaries began visiting the Sun’s offices, including the head of the archdiocese of New York, Edward Cardinal Egan; the district attorney of New York County, Robert Morgenthau, and the deputy prime minister of Israel, Natan Sharansky, as well as Mr. Chalabi. Governor Cuomo, whom the Sun’s editor had met in the living room of conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr., was an early guest, as was C. Virginia Fields, then the president of Manhattan. (Sun style outlawed the phrase “borough president.”) Buckley was an enormous fan of the Sun, and withdrew his column from the New York Post to run it in the Sun, where it appeared every week until the great columnist’s death.Less prominent visitors came by, too, including at one point a wizard in full regalia who’d heard that the newspaper had a reporter who specialized in legerdemain and other arcana. It did.During the blackout of August 14, 2003, reporters feverishly put the Sun together on laptops with fading batteries, illuminating their notes with flashlights. The paper came out as usual the next day, 12 pages in full color with a photo of the Statue of Liberty half-illuminated against a darkened Battery Park. The effort was spearheaded by Mr. Stoll and the paper’s news editor at the time, Stuart Marques. Mr. Lipsky was on vacation in Maine, and later told someone he’d never doubted they’d manage, so he’d gone swimming.The Sun’s coverage began to be noted from its earliest issues, when, among other stories, it reported that some of the leaders of the Queens Democratic Party lived in mansions outside the city; Mayor Bloomberg was irked when the paper scooped his announcement of the city’s annual report card; Jack Newfield and Colin Miner played a leading role in exposing the Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Clarence Norman, who eventually went to prison. It was one of Newfield’s last crusades. He died December 20, 2004, not long after publishing a self-interview on the Sun’s front page.Despite the presence of storied writers in its pages, the Sun sometimes had to strive for recognition. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, the Sun’s California-based national correspondent, Josh Gerstein, was stopped by security at an event and asked which newspaper he worked for. When he explained, the police phoned the newspaper and reached a receptionist, who, when asked whether the paper had a California bureau, responded no. Mr. Gerstein was promptly arrested and held for some hours until the confusion was sorted out, him no worse for the wear.Stories from abroad were part of the mix as well, and the Sun was among the early American outlets to send a reporting team — Dina Temple-Raston and photographer Konrad Fiedler — to Darfur. Sun correspondents, including Adam Daifallah and Eli Lake, did turns in Iraq, as well.The Sun, which had an aversion to the nanny state, opposed the mayor’s campaign to ban indoor smoking and regulate trans fats, a campaign it ridiculed in an editorial called “Bloomberg Fries.”Other newspapers and magazines, some perhaps annoyed at being scooped, turned to the Sun as a recruiting ground and hired numerous Sun reporters and editors. Seth Mnookin, Rachel Donadio, Robert Messenger, and Jeremy McCarter were among the names lost to other papers. Yet the Sun never lacked for applicants, especially interns from top-ranked colleges eager to score a byline in the most exciting newspaper market in the country. Some of the paper’s most important contributors rarely, if ever, got bylines: A deputy managing editor, John Seeley, and the night editor, Martha Mercer, who was later promoted to day editor, worked with a small team of copy editors and page designers to produce the paper night after night.Mr. Bloomberg had been skeptical at the start, but in 2004, he stopped by the offices of the Sun to proclaim April 16 “New York Sun Day” in New York City. Yesterday, he greeted the news of the paper’s decision to cease publication with a statement that called the paper’s writers “smart, thoughtful, provocative — and sometimes even courageous.” Said the mayor: “In a City saturated with news coverage and commentary, The Sun shone brightly, though too briefly.”

Picking Up the Flag of the Sun

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