New Daily Newspaper Is Planned in New York City for 2002 (Conservative alternative to NYTimes)

The New York Times ^ | November 29, 2001 | JAYSON BLAIR

[l33t]

n investment group that includes the company of the publisher Conrad M. Black said yesterday that it planned to start printing a new daily newspaper in New York City in the first few months of next year.

The newspaper will "be very upmarket, certainly neoconservative in its ideological views," said Daniel W. Colson, the vice chairman of Mr. Black's company, Hollinger International (news/quote).

The newspaper, which will be called The New York Sun, will start publishing at a time when advertising revenues are in a sharp decline because of the weakening economy. The Sun will enter one of the nation's most competitive newspaper markets, where two of the city's daily newspapers, The New York Post and The Daily News, have both lost money in recent years.

Executives who work with Mr. Black, the chairman of Hollinger International, which owns The Chicago Sun-Times, and The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph of London, said that he had long wanted a newspaper in New York.

The top editors of the newspaper will be Seth Lipsky, who resigned under fire in 2000 as editor of The Forward, the English-language descendant of the venerable Daily Forward, and Ira Stoll, a former Forward staff member who now runs smartertimes.com, a daily Internet critique of The New York Times (news/quote). Mr. Stoll describes himself on his site as "an ordinary semi-intelligent guy in Brooklyn who reads the newspaper carefully early each morning."

In a telephone interview from London yesterday, Mr. Colson said: "Look, New York is obviously one of the greatest, if not the greatest city in the world. Conrad Black lives part time in New York and is a great fan of New York. It's only natural."

He added, "I think you can assume the quality of the newspaper will be very high."

In 1993, Mr. Black failed in a bid to buy The Daily News. In 1999, he was unable to work out an agreement to buy a large interest in The New York Observer. Mr. Black was born in Canada, but he has renounced his Canadian citizenship and is a member of the House of Lords in Britain as Lord Black of Crossharbour. His company is based in Chicago.

Mr. Colson said Hollinger was making a 12.5 percent investment in The Sun, or about $2 million of the $15 million invested in the project.

The plans for the newspaper were reported yesterday in The Observer.

Mr. Colson said startup costs would be low because The Sun did not plan to establish its own printing and distribution systems, and would instead contract those services out.

Mr. Lipsky, a longtime New York journalist who covered the Vietnam War and worked at The Asian Wall Street Journal, was the founding editor of the English-language Forward. He resigned in May 2000 after a battle with some investors over what they perceived as the newspaper's increasingly conservative bent under his leadership. Mr. Stoll, who also worked at The Forward, left at the same time and has since been operating smartertimes.com, which describes itself as being "dedicated to the proposition that New York's dominant daily has grown complacent, slow and inaccurate."

Smartertimes.com has lately been displaying classified advertisements seeking journalists and others to work for a new daily newspaper.

Mr. Lipsky and Mr. Stoll declined to comment yesterday. An executive involved in the planning said the Sun's other investors include Roger Hertog, the vice chairman of Alliance Capital Management (news/quote), and Michael Steinhardt, a former hedge- fund manager and former vice chairman of The Forward. There are other investors, Hollinger officials said.

Hollinger officials said that Mr. Hertog, who had expressed an interest in starting what he called a conservative alternative to The Times, helped Mr. Stoll and Mr. Lipsky write the business plan.

Mr. Hertog did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.

In circulation, Hollinger International is one of the world's largest newspaper and magazine publishers.

The venture takes the name of a storied newspaper from the city's past. The New York Sun, founded in 1833 by Benjamin H. Day, was among the first successful penny- press daily newspapers and is perhaps most remembered for its "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" editorial in 1897. Charles A. Dana, editor of The Sun for almost three decades starting in 1868, was among the era's most influential journalists. The Sun effectively ceased to exist when it merged with The New York World-Telegram in 1950.

[l33t]

Sounds like the New York Sun will be a broadsheet like the Times and won't compete as much with the New York Post.

[Cicero]

So I think. Note how the Times tries to pretend that the new paper will be down there competing with the dregs, two money-losing tabloids, in a fiercely competitive market, at a terrible time when ad revenues are down. As a matter of fact, the Times's ad revenues were way down in their last financial report.

It's kind of funny that one of the new editors recently started an English edition of the Daily Forward before being ousted as too conservative. The Daily Forward used to be known as the Jewish Daily Forward and was published in Yiddish. The great Jewish novelist Isaac B. Singer published most of his work there first, in Yiddish, before it was translated into English. As the name suggests, it was originally very "forward" or progessive, i.e. Marxist.

If this editor presently runs SmarterTimes.com, then it's pretty obvious who their main target is. Good luck to them!

[l33t]

I wish them much luck, but the truth is that unless they are able to establish themselves as a credible alternative to the New York Times and have good international coverage they will have a very hard time.

[afuturegovernor]

I hope they slap the Times around. I have a professor who believes the NYT is the best media source in the world and he requires reading of some of its editorals.

[Tacis]

Strange characterization! ANY newspaper, even Pravda, is conservative compared to the NYT.

[OldFriend]

Even the back of my cereal box has more credibility and relevance than the New York Slimes!

[TwoStep]

**Ping**

[LarryLied]

Mr. Stoll, who also worked at The Forward, left at the same time and has since been operating smartertimes.com, which describes itself as being "dedicated to the proposition that New York's dominant daily has grown complacent, slow and inaccurate." Smartertimes.com has lately been displaying classified advertisements seeking journalists and others to work for a new daily newspaper.

Smartertimes sends out a daily email critque of the New York Times. Today's is here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/582741/posts

They must hate this.

[Darth Sidious]

Feh! They're johnny-come-latelies to this game. Among New York newspapers, the discriminating reader can ALWAYS rely on the Daily Bugle and the scathing wit of it's conservative editor J. Jonah Jameson...