Today is the last day of the New York Sun; editor Seth Lipsky says goodbye. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the paper (which given its abysmal circulation numbers, are legion), the Sun was a well-written and unapologetically neoconservative rag that revived a legendary name in the newspaper world. Its copy was generally politically skewed to the right, its internships were legendarily terrible, its editor fired a TV critic (who later became editor of the Village Voice even though New Times turned it into a shell of its former self) over the objections of its culture editor, who then resigned. Any of this behavior sound familiar?

The Evening Bulletin, which simply bit the Sun‘s style, is still kicking. Launched in 2004 as essentially Philly’s Sun, the Bulletin ran much of the Sun‘s content, likely because it was cheap and politically simpatico. Speaking of cheap, according to former editor John Secor, who resigned in 2006 due to something like disgust, the Bulletin was sometimes unable to meet payroll or pay contributors. Even though back in 2005, they were only paying $50 for the first feature published by a writer (if they liked you and bought more articles, the rate went up to $100, if you got paid). Yet the paper still lurches along.

Even though we disagree with pretty much everything it does in pretty much every way, the new Bulletin (as did the Sun) took a big risk in launching a new daily paper. We’d just like to see new media endeavors that contribute to the public debate with good reporting and thoughtful analysis – which, we gotta admit, the Sun sometimes had – instead of functioning as a propaganda sheet for the angry suburban conservative community. And with the Sun no longer able to feed them content, that’s about all it is. Sun, even though we loathed you, we grudgingly respected you, sometimes. Bulletin, we look forward to pouring out some Armagnac on the curb for you one day soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 3:51 pm.