The Sun was a New York newspaper published from 1833 until 1950. It was considered a serious paper,[2] like the city's two more successful broadsheets, The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. The Sun was the first successful penny daily newspaper in the United States, and was for a time, the most successful newspaper in America.[3][4]
The paper had a central focus on crime news, in which it was a pioneer, and was the first journal to hire a police reporter.[5][6] Its audience was primarily working class readers.
The Sun began publication in New York on September 3, 1833, as a morning newspaper edited by Benjamin Day (1810–1889), with the slogan "It Shines for All".[7] It cost only one penny (equivalent to 32¢ in 2023[8]), was easy to carry, and had illustrations and crime reporting popular with working-class readers.[9]
It inspired a new genre across the nation, known as the penny press, which made the news more accessible to low-income readers at a time when most papers cost five cents.[1]The Sun was also the first newspaper to hire newspaper hawkers to sell it on the street, developing the trade of newsboys shouting headlines.[10]
The offices of The Sun, 1893
The Sun was the first newspaper to report crimes and personal events such as suicides, deaths, and divorces. The paper had a focus on police reports and human-interest stories for the masses, which consisted of short descriptions of arrests, thefts, and violence.[12][4] With their competitor the New York Herald, founded by James Gordon Bennett, they covered murder cases such as Helen Jewett's murder, the murder of John C. Colt's murder, Samuel Colt's brother, and Mary Rogers's case near Sybil's Cave.[13][14]The Sun and The Herald took sides in these cases, championing working class people over the traditional landed and mercantile elites which, during this era, held disproportionate power over the nation's politics and economy.[14]
Benjamin Day's brother-in-law, Moses Yale Beach, joined the venture in 1834, became co-owner in 1835, and a few years later, became sole proprietor, bringing a number of innovations to the industry.[15] It became the largest among the Gotham papers for 20 years, sometimes eclipsed by the New-York Tribune or the New York Herald.[16][17]
The newspaper printed the first newspaper account of a suicide. This story was significant because it was the first about the death of an ordinary person. It changed journalism forever, making the newspaper an integral part of the community and the lives of the readers.
Day was the first to hire reporters to go out and collect stories. Prior to this, newspapers dealt almost exclusively in articles about politics or reviews of books or the theater and relied, in the days before the organization of syndicates such as the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI), on items sent in by readers and unauthorized copies of stories from other newspapers. The Sun's focus on crime was the beginning of "the craft of reporting and storytelling".[18][19]
Crime news provided New Yorkers with information about how the city worked, dwelling on violations of justice, abuse of state power and corrupt schemes.[20]
The Sun was also the first newspaper to show that a newspaper could be substantially supported by advertisements rather than subscription fees, and could be sold on the street instead of delivered to each subscriber. Prior to The Sun, printers produced newspapers, often at a loss, making their living selling printing services.[21] Day and The Sun recognized that the masses were fast becoming literate, and demonstrated that a profit could be made selling to them.
An evening edition, known as The Evening Sun, was introduced in 1887. The newspaper magnate Frank Munsey bought both editions of the paper in 1916 and merged The Evening Sun with his New York Press. The morning edition of The Sun was merged for a time with Munsey's New York Herald as The Sun and New York Herald, but in 1920, Munsey separated them again, killed The Evening Sun, and switched The Sun to an evening publishing format.[7]
From 1914 to 1919, The Sun moved its offices to 150 Nassau Street, one of the first skyscrapers made of steel, and one of the tallest in the city at the time. The tower was close to the New York Times Building, Woolworth Tower, and New York City Hall. In 1919, The Sun moved its offices to the A.T. Stewart Company Building, site of America's first department store, at 280 Broadway between Reade and Chambers Streets.[30] 280 Broadway was renamed "The Sun Building" in 1928.[30][31] A clock featuring The Sun's name and slogan was built at the corner with Broadway and Chambers Street.[32]
Munsey died in 1925 with a fortune of about 20 million dollars, and was ranked as one of the most powerful media moguls of his time, along with William Randolph Hearst.[33] He left the bulk of his estate, including The Sun, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The next year The Sun was sold to William Dewart, a longtime associate of Munsey's. Dewart's son Thomas later ran the paper.[34]
In the 1940s, the newspaper was considered among the most conservative in New York City and was strongly opposed to the New Deal and labor unions. The Sun won a Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for an exposé of labor racketeering; it also published the early work of sportswriter W.C. Heinz.
It continued until January 4, 1950, when it merged with the New York World-Telegram to form a new paper called the New York World-Telegram and Sun. That paper continued for 16 years; in 1966, it joined with the New York Herald Tribune to briefly become part of the World Journal Tribune, preserving the names of three of the most historic city newspapers, which folded amid disputes with the unions representing its staff the following year.
The Sun first gained notice for its central role in the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, a fabricated story of life and civilization on the Moon which the paper falsely attributed to British astronomer John Herschel and never retracted.[35] The hoax featured man-bat creatures named the "Vespertilio-homo" that inhabited the moon and built temples. A Yale University delegation was sent to look after the article, and the whole story created much sensation at the time.[19]
On April 13, 1844, The Sun published a story by Edgar Allan Poe now known as "The Balloon-Hoax", retracted two days after publication. The story told of an imagined Atlantic crossing by hot-air balloon.[36]
From 1912, Don Marquis wrote a regular column, 'The Sundial', for the Evening Sun. In 1916, he used this to introduce his characters Archy and Mehitabel.[39]
In 1926, The Sun published a review by John Grierson of Robert Flaherty's film Moana, in which Grierson said the film had "documentary value". This is considered the origin of the term "documentary film".[40]
The Sun's first female reporter was Emily Verdery Bettey, hired in 1868. Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd was hired as a reporter and fashion editor in the 1880s. Brainerd was one of the first women to become a professional editor, and perhaps the first full-time fashion editor in American newspaper history.
In 1881, the heroic legend of sheriff Bartholomew Masterson, known as "Bat Masterson", started from the coverage of a Sun reporter whom he had duped.[41] He was a companion of Buffalo Bill, and fought at the Battle of Dodge City War, and was later the subject of a book titled Gunfighter in Gotham and the American TV series Bat Masterson.[41]
The film Deadline – U.S.A. (1952) is a story about the death of a New York newspaper called The Day, loosely based upon the Sun, which closed in 1950. The original Sun newspaper was edited by Benjamin Day, making the film's newspaper name a play on words (not to be confused with the real-life New London, Connecticut newspaper of the same name).
The masthead of the original Sun is visible in a montage of newspaper clippings in a scene of the 1972 film The Godfather. The newspaper's offices were a converted department store at 280 Broadway, between Chambers and Reade streets in lower Manhattan, now known as "The Sun Building" and famous for the clocks that bear the newspaper's masthead and motto. They were recognized as a New York City landmark in 1986. The building now houses the New York City Department of Buildings.
In the 1994 movie The Paper, a fictional tabloid newspaper based in New York City bore the same name and motto of The Sun, with a slightly different masthead.
In 2002, a new broadsheet was launched, styled The New York Sun, and bearing the old newspaper's masthead and motto. It was intended as a "conservative alternative" and local news-focused alternative to the more liberal The New York Times and other New York newspapers. It was published by Ronald Weintraub and edited by Seth Lipsky, and ceased publication on September 30, 2008. In 2022, it was revived as an online newspaper, under the ownership of Dovid Efune, while Lipsky remained editor.[43]
In journalism, yellow journalism and the yellow press are American newspapers that use eye-catching headlines and sensationalized exaggerations for increased sales. The English term is chiefly used in the US. In the United Kingdom, a similar term is tabloid journalism. Other languages, e.g. Russian, sometimes have terms derived from the American term. Yellow journalism emerged in the intense battle for readers by two newspapers in New York City in 1890s. It was not common in other cities.
The Chicago American was an afternoon newspaper published in Chicago under various names from 1900 until its dissolution in 1975.
The New York Herald was a large-distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between 1835 and 1924. At that point it was acquired by its smaller rival the New-York Tribune to form the New York Herald Tribune.
Benjamin Henry Day was an American newspaper publisher who founded the New York Sun, the first penny press newspaper in the United States, in 1833.
The New York Herald Tribune was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed with The New York Times in the daily morning market. The paper won twelve Pulitzer Prizes during its lifetime.
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 to 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers as a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publisher Joseph Pulitzer, it was a pioneer in yellow journalism, capturing readers' attention with sensation, sports, sex and scandal and pushing its daily circulation to the one-million mark. It was sold in 1931 and merged into the New York World-Telegram.
The "Great Moon Hoax", also known as the "Great Moon Hoax of 1835" was a series of six articles published in The Sun, beginning on August 25, 1835, about the supposed discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel and his fictitious companion Andrew Grant.
Penny press newspapers were cheap, tabloid-style newspapers mass-produced in the United States from the 1830s onwards. Mass production of inexpensive newspapers became possible following the shift from hand-crafted to steam-powered printing. Famous for costing one cent while other newspapers cost around six cents, penny press papers were revolutionary in making the news accessible to middle class citizens for a reasonable price.
The Baltimore Morning Herald was a daily newspaper published in Baltimore in the beginning of the 20th century.
The Baltimore News-American was a broadsheet newspaper published in downtown Baltimore, Maryland until May 27, 1986. It had a continuous lineage of more than 200 years. For much of the mid-20th century, it had the largest circulation in the city.
Charles Anderson Dana was an American journalist, author, and senior government official. He was a top aide to Horace Greeley as the managing editor of the powerful Republican newspaper New-York Tribune until 1862. During the American Civil War, he served as Assistant Secretary of War, playing especially the role of the liaison between the War Department and General Ulysses S. Grant. In 1868 he became the editor and part-owner of The New York Sun. He at first appealed to working class Democrats but after 1890 became a champion of business-oriented conservatism. Dana was an avid art collector of paintings and porcelains and boasted of being in possession of many items not found in several European museums.
Frank Andrew Munsey was an American newspaper and magazine publisher, banker, political financier and author. He was born in Mercer, Maine, but spent most of his life in New York City. The village of Munsey Park, New York, is named for him, along with The Munsey Building in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, at the southeast corner of North Calvert and East Fayette Streets.
The New-York Commercial Advertiser was an American evening newspaper. It originated as the American Minerva in 1793, changed its name in 1797, and was published, with slight name variations, until 1904.
Moses Yale Beach was an American inventor, entrepreneur, philanthropist and publisher, who founded the Associated Press, and is credited with originating print syndication. His fortune, as of 1846, amounted to $300,000, which was about 1/4 of the fortune of Cornelius Vanderbilt at the time, and was featured in a book that he published named the Wealthy citizens of the City of New York.
The Munsey Trust Building was a historic high-rise office building located in Washington, D.C., United States, on E Street, N.W., between 13th and 14th Streets.
Brother Jonathan was a weekly publication operated by Benjamin Day from 1842 to 1862, and was the first weekly illustrated publication in the United States.
Jason Rogers was an early 20th-century newspaper publisher best known for his success as a publisher of The New York Globe.
The New York Star or the Daily Star (1868–1891) was a New York City newspaper.
Moses Sperry Beach was an American newspaper owner, editor, inventor, and politician from New York. His papers were the Boston Daily Times and the New York Sun. He ran the Sun through most of the American Civil War, and was active during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.
William Thompson Dewart was an American publisher.
↑ Moses Yale Beach, An American inventor and newspaper entrepreneur, Moses Yale Beach (1800-1868) contributed to the technology of his time but was, above all, an important developer of popular journalism, Encyclopedia.com.
↑ Lee, James Melvin (1917). STEAM EXPEESSES OF " THE SUN, History of American Journalism, Houghton Mifflin Company, Director of the Department of Journalism New York University, Chapter 9, p. 212
1 2 Maury Klein (1996). When New York Became the U.S. Media Capital, City Journal, From the Magazine Technology and Innovation, States and Cities, Economy, finance, and budgets, Arts and Culture, Summer 1996
Steele, Janet E. The Sun Shines for All: Journalism and Ideology in the Life of Charles A. Dana (Syracuse University Press, 1993)
Stone, Candace. Dana and the Sun (Dodd, Mead, 1938)
Tucher, Andie, Froth and Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America's First Mass Medium'. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
The Sun digitized at Chronicling America, Library of Congress (1859 to 1916, incomplete)
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