New York Sun Publishes Its Final Issue
The New York Sun has published its final issue.
The New York Times reports:
The New York Sun, the six-year-old newspaper with a conservative mind-set, announced on Monday that it would close after publishing Tuesday's issue.
The Sun's president and editor, Seth Lipsky, said a three-week search for new financial backers had failed. Mr. Lipsky announced on Sept. 4, in a front-page "Letter From the Editor," that The Sun would shut down by the end of the month unless it raised new money.
Mr. Lipsky told editors and reporters who gathered on Monday afternoon in The Sun's loftlike newsroom in Lower Manhattan that the shutdown was "a logical decision following a hardheaded assessment of our chances of meeting our goal of profitable publication in the near future."
Lipsky published an excerpt of his remarks in Tuesday's Sun, titled "The Ideal of the Scoop." A selection of those remarks appears below:
It is my duty to report today that Ira Stoll and I and our partners have concluded that the Sun will cease publication. Our last number will be the issue dated September 30, the first day of Rosh Hashanah. I want you to know that Ira and I, and our partners, explored every possible way to avoid having to cease publication.
We have spoken with every individual who seemed to be a prospective partner, and everywhere we were received with courtesy and respect. I tend to be an optimist and held out hope for a favorable outcome as late as mid-afternoon today. But among other problems that we faced was the fact that this month, not to mention this week, has been one of the worst in a century in which to be trying to raise capital, and in the end we were out not only of money but time.
So we are at this sad moment. It is sad for any newspaper to go out of publication, and it is particularly sad for one that is as loved as much as all of us here love The New York Sun and the readers we have won in our six-and-a-half years of publication. But I want you to know that the decision to close the paper has not been an acrimonious one. It is a logical decision following a hard-headed assessment of our chances of meeting our goal of profitable publication in the near future.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued the following statement on the end of the New York Sun:
In a City saturated with news coverage and commentary, The Sun shone brightly, though too briefly. Whether you agreed or disagreed with the Sun's writers, they were smart, thoughtful, provocative - and sometimes even courageous. What other paper in America urged Dick Cheney to run for President? The Sun launched the careers of many talented and dedicated journalists, whose stories often raised the bar for their competitors. I am sorry to see the Sun halt its presses and send my best wishes to all labored so hard to make it a success, especially Seth Lipsky and Ira Stoll.
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First Posted: 09-30-08 07:40 AM | Updated: 10-31-08 05:12 AM