New York Sun (historical)

The Sun

The November 26, 1834 front page of The Sun
Type	Daily newspaper
Editor	Benjamin Day (1833)
Founded	September 3, 1833
Ceased publication	January 4, 1950
Headquarters	New York City

The Sun was a New York newspaper that was published from 1833 until 1950. It was considered a serious paper, like the city's two more successful broadsheets, The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. The Sun was the most politically conservative of the three.

In New York, The Sun began publication September 3, 1833, as a morning newspaper edited by Benjamin Day with the slogan "It Shines for All". This was a penny press newspaper.

The Sun was groundbreaking in its content, being the first newspaper to report crimes and personal events such as suicides, deaths, and divorces. Day printed the first newspaper account of a suicide. This story was significant because it was the first about an ordinary person. It changed journalism forever, making the newspaper an integral part of the community and the lives of the readers. Prior to this, all stories in newspapers were about politics or reviews of books or the theater. Day was the first to hire reporters to go out and collect stories. Prior to this, newspapers relied on readers sending in items, and on making unauthorized copies of stories from other newspapers. His focus on crime is the beginning of "the craft of reporting and storytelling". If not the inventor, The Sun was nonetheless the newspaper which demonstrated conclusively that a newspaper could be supported by advertisements and not subscription fees, and could be sold on the street instead of delivered to each subscriber. In addition, The Sun was aimed not at the elite but at the common masses of working people. Day and The Sun recognized that the masses were fast becoming literate, and demonstrated that a profit could be made selling to them. Prior to The Sun, printers produced the newspapers, often at a loss, making their living selling printing services.

An evening edition was introduced in 1887. Frank Munsey bought both editions 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 moved The Sun to an evening format. This paper 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; in 1966, this paper became part of the New York World Journal Tribune, which folded the following year.