With Alums’ Help, Sun Rises

The sun came out yesterday—the New York Sun, that is.

Leaders of the Sun, the first daily paper launched in New York City since 1985, say the paper will offer its readers “an alternative” to the New York Times.

The paper, which had a first press run of 75,000 copies yesterday and is distributed at 4,000 newsstands throughout the city’s five boroughs, runs with a small staff—a staff that’s full of Harvard graduates.

The president and editor of the newspaper is Seth A. Lipsky ’68, who worked for The Crimson as an undergraduate, and former Crimson President Ira E. Stoll ’94 is the Sun’s new vice president and managing editor.

Stoll, who first met Lipsky in 1993 while he was on campus for his 25th class reunion, said the newspaper is an exciting opportunity for both of them.

They had worked together at the Forward, a Jewish newspaper published out of New York. When the Forward failed to go daily, the men decided to move on, Stoll said.

In recent years, Stoll has been the editor of Smartertimes.com, a website that publishes a daily critique of the New York Times.

According to the site, that project is “dedicated to the proposition that New York’s dominant daily has grown complacent, slow, and inaccurate.” The site also aims at “assembling a community of readers to support a new newspaper that would offer an alternative.”

Stoll said he has spent much of the last year preparing for the launch of the paper and hiring staff.

The Sun will try to fill a void in New York City coverage, he said.

“There was room for a high-quality paper focused on New York City,” Stoll said.

Former Crimson executive Rachel P. Kovner ’01 works as one of the paper’s eight news writers.

Kovner, who among other beats will cover the New York City schools, said she sees an opening for the paper “because the New York Times has had a more national focus in recent years, and we will cover New York almost exclusively.”

Stoll said the new paper would attract a readership looking for a high-quality “lively, but serious newspaper.”

“We’d like to get a paid subscription of 25- to 30,000 by the end of the year,” he said.

Although there have been many bleak projections about the Sun’s future in such a competitive marketplace, Stoll said they are not deterred.

“No one is under the impression that this is going to be easy,” he said.

The Sun’s editorial page will be more conservative than that of the New York Times, with regular contributors such as Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for President Reagan. Though Stoll’s Smartertimes.com has been criticized for its heavy focus on the Israeli conflict and its Zionist approach, staff members said editorial content would not affect the Sun’s news coverage.

“Our reporting staff is ideologically diverse,” Kovner said.

The paper, which will vary from 12 to 18 pages a day, carried nine stories on its front page yesterday, including pieces on a court battle over New York wine sales, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s welfare reform position and an Associated Press story about the discovery of an ant colony stretching from Italy to Spain.

The Sun’s name and masthead are borrowed from the original New York Sun newspaper that was published between 1833 and 1950.

The new incarnation of the Sun is backed financially by Canadian newspaper baron Conrad Black and several individual New Yorkers.

Initial investment in the paper is estimated to be between $20 and $25 million, according to the Associated Press.

—Material from the Associated Press was used in the compilation of this article.