The Great Moon Hoax was the fourth greatest scientific fraud of all time, according to one internet listicle! The six stories were quite the sensation at the time and successfully sold some extra papers, although it's not clear whether everyone believed the stories or not. We would have! Listen to this sample scientific-sounding report:

The next animal perceived would be classed on earth as
a monster. It was of a bluish lead color, about the size of
a goat, with a head and beard like him, and a single horn,
slightly inclined forward from the perpendicular. The
female was destitute of horn and beard, but had a much
longer tail. It was gregarious, and chiefly abounded on the
acclivitous glades of the woods. In elegance of symmetry it
rivalled the antelope, and like him it seemed an agile
sprightly creature, running with great speed, and springing
from the green turf with all the unaccountable antics of a
young lamb or kitten. This beautiful creature afforded us
the most exquisite amusement. The mimicry of its movements
upon our white painted canvass was as faithful and luminous
as that of animals within a few yards of the camera obscrua,
when seen pictures upon its tympan. Frequently when
attempting to put our fingers upon its beard, it would
suddenly bound away into oblivion, as if conscious of our
earthly impertinence; but then others would appear, whom we
could not prevent from nibbling the herbage, say or do what
we would to them.

Telescopes were amazing back then.

One hundred and seventy four years later, the New York Sun is dead, but the sprightly moon creatures are doing fine.

The outgoing president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors is angry! "I am angry at the pundits who would dance on newspapers' graves. Their anti-newspaper vitriol disrespects the work being done by journalists in newsrooms all over America.
These pundits take delight in telling us we are failures. Yet truth be told, the vast majority of local public interest journalism—the watchdog stories, the investigations, the coverage of city hall and the school board, the stories with impact on public policy—is still being done in newspaper newsrooms." As is the majority of writing of angry columns directed at straw men!


Sad party report: last night current and former staffers of the now-dead Portfolio gathered for a wake for the magazine at Botanica. Michael Caruso, Bob Row, and Jeff Chu were among the mourners. "It was mournful but also a relief and anti-climactic," said one attendee, "because everyone knew it was going to come to an end." On a somewhat positive note, the 85 staffers losing their jobs are getting paid through August.


Yet another group of former newspaper guys (this time, 40 bought-out refugees from Newark) are getting together to launch a website covering news in their former coverage area (this time, NewJerseyNewsroom.com). Do any of these projects have any hope of eventually generating enough revenue to pay their employees a living wage, each? We doubt it but at the same time we hope so, because we are not pundits who would dance on newspapers' graves.


The NYT Co. is rumored to be considering selling off the NYC classical music radio station that it owns. They sure will if they can get a dollar for it. They need dollars.

Ha, while nobody was looking (except Kate Klonick of True/Slant), the defunct New York Sun started publishing editorials on its website again! Since its editorials were the most repulsive part of the paper, I wonder if they've changed at all? (Checks). Nope.

As the newspaper industry had transformed — with formerly working-class, hardboiled "reporters" becoming professional-class, college-educated "journalists" — Lipsky is defiantly old-school, an oddball character with an almost Dickensian quality. Normal office etiquette did not apply to him. "He has a tendency to call you at all hours of the day, to email you at all hours of the day," Lake says. One former editorial page staffer recalled how Lipsky rigged the office fire bell to ring whenever he dialed a certain number from his home — he didn't think people were answering his calls quickly enough before. At one point, he was widely suspected as the culprit responsible for stealing staff lunches from the office refrigerator.

Ha ha it's funny because Lipsky was also famous for supposedly expensing his lavish lunches to the struggling paper. Lunch brought down the Sun! Spread the word!

Reading about the end of The New York Sun, I was reminded of my job, inconceivable in today’s world, that I held at the original New York Sun in the summer of 1944, the year I was about to enter college. That was selling lost and found ads.

Each morning I read such ads in The Herald Tribune. I then phoned the person seeking the lost object, acknowledging that I was aware of the loss.

Invariably the person at the other end gleefully asked where I had found the treasure in question. I admitted I hadn’t and then assured my customer that his or her chances of retrieval would double if an advertisement were placed in our evening paper.

Of course said worker — and for the record she sounds like a sweet and honest soul who should never lose sleep over all this — had no idea whether people's chances were really doubled by taking out such an ad. We doubt the publisher did, either.

This particular game is just one small part of the price-gouging that went on in classified sections in newspapers throughout the country. And newspapers wonder why there is so much apathy around their declining fortunes!

Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly are doing the people of New York and the people of Iraq a great service by delaying and obstructing the antiwar protest planned for February 15. The longer they delay in granting the protesters a permit, the less time the organizers have to get their turnout organized, and the smaller the crowd is likely to be. And we wouldn't want to overstate the matter, but, at some level, the smaller the crowd, the more likely that President Bush will proceed with his plans to liberate Iraq...

The protesters probably do have a claim under the right to free speech. Never mind that it's not the speech that the city is objecting to — it's the marching in the streets, blocking traffic, and requiring massive police protection.

So long as the protesters are invoking the Constitution, they might have a look at Article III. That says, "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."

...the New York City police could do worse, in the end, than to allow the protest and send two witnesses along for each participant, with an eye toward preserving at least the possibility of an eventual treason prosecution. Thus fully respecting not just some, but all of the constitutional principles at stake.

To those concerned about civil liberties, we'd cite the pragmatic argument made last night by, of all people, the New York Times's three-time Pulitzer-Prize winning foreign affairs columnist, Thos. Friedman. "I believe we are one more 9/11 away from the end of the open society," Mr. Friedman told an American Jewish Committee dinner honoring the chief executive of the New York Times Company, Russell Lewis.

Lipsky should be thankful Times editors respect free expression far more than his own editorial page did. And he should be doubly thankful for their short memories.

Yup! Cerberus! Oh well, that's the free market! Says a source: "[Sun Editor Seth] Lipsky gave up trying to raise money after the bailout failed to pass."

So it turns out it is not only middle-class social conservatives in Kansas who will vote Republican against their economic self-interest. Zionist New York plutocrat neoconservatives will too. Even if it means silencing their mouthpiece forever! Don't worry, Seth, Republicans will continue doing the talking (out of both sides of their mouths) for you, as conservative columnist David Brooks did today:

What we need in this situation is authority. Not heavy-handed government regulation, but the steady and powerful hand of some public institutions that can guard against the corrupting influences of sloppy money and then prevent destructive contagions when the credit dries up.

And lest some of you liberals fail to grasp the nuance of the argument here, there is a very important difference between "heavy-handed government regulation" and "steady and powerful public institutions": the former is run by career civil servants and latter by former investment bankers who would only deign to work for the private sector if it meant allowing them to skip out on the capital gains taxes on that half-billion portfolio of Goldman stock they had to unload to take the job. Because conservatives know better than to trust anyone who claims not to be motivated by pure economic self-interest! Which is maybe why they should all get out of the antiquated business of running newspapers and into something truly profitable! Such as……

The opening of the farewell editorial sets the scene:

What a run. A newspaper founded by a company that was scheduled to be created on September 11, 2001, announces its last issue on September 29, 2008, the day of the largest one-day point drop in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It's easy to forget the boom years in between that were bracketed by the terrorist attacks and the financial crisis.

Who can forget the glorious boom years of fear, war, torture, scandal and ignorance that have led us to this miserable wheezing end of our second gilded age? Thanks, Sun!

Their official history of the paper similarly ignores the things we loved about the scrappy daily in favor of reminding us of things like their idiotic call for the privatization of the New York subways in the very first editorial (followed by one announcing that some Washington Mall hippie demonstration was part of "The War Against the Jews"). The paper's founder and brainchild continues to impress:

When the paper was launched, a reporter of the Washington Post had asked its editor, Seth Lipsky, how the Sun would be able to compete against the New York Times, which had "eighty reporters" on its metropolitan desk. The Times might have 80 reporters, he replied, but they missed the story that taxes are too high, that the reason there is an apartment shortage is rent control, and that vouchers are a movement to rescue minority children from failing schools.

Yes, the Times missed that all-important local story on how taxes are too high, much as they missed the breaking national "hippies smell" scandal. We are trying to root for you here, Seth!

But it's hard. It's oh-so-hard. It is sad to see a daily broadsheet with smart writing fail, but honestly it didn't have to. The paper "burned through an estimated $80 million in its six and a half years of operation," according to the Post (which is gloating about the failure, yes, but still). If they'd began, back in 2001, as the tiny modest paper Lipsky originally intended, and built a strong internet presence, they'd be the Politico of the Intellectual Zionist New York Right Wing right now. Do you know what we could do with $80 million???

But no. They launched their paper just as their world-view reached its peak influence (post-9/11!), not when it was still a burgeoning, growing movement. So then they were stuck with it as it failed and lost favor. They launched a newspaper—a daily broadsheet!—as the newspaper industry collapsed and the internet took off again. It's hard not to see this as yet another example of "the smartest guys in the room" coming out looking like suckers.

Situations change of course, and added to the mix has been the great debate over foreign policy and the war. We are struck with each crisis — including the one that has beset our markets, when the temptation is running strong for so many to take the statist bait, though not once did we consider asking Washington to bail out the Sun — of the importance of guiding principles.

If that bit about not asking for a bailout is a joke, it's a lousy, un-self-aware one. Their glorious market, like their generation-defining war, was built on lies and misplaced faith, sold to us by hucksters like them (but more successful ones), and the cleanup for both mistakes will take years. Good riddance. See you on the internet.

From Lipsky's remarks to staff, excerpted in "Ideal Of The Scoop:"

[Closure] was always a risk, and all the greater is the heroism of our financial backers. Even at the end they were offering millions of dollars if we could find the partners we needed. I don't mind saying to you, as I have to them, that I very much regret - I will always regret - that we were not able to return to them the capital that they invested in us...

They invested in the ideal of the scoop, the notion that news is the spirit of democracy, and in the principles for which we have stood in our editorial pages - limited and honest government, equality under our Constitution and the law, free markets, sound money, and a strong foreign policy in support of freedom and democracy...

It is in the nature of things that there are going to be some jeers as we go out, as there were when we came in. Do not be discouraged by this... All of you will be able to tell your children and your grandchildren or simply your friends that not only did you appear in arms in a great newspaper war but that you did so on your own terms, for principles you believed in...

From "Picking Up The Flag Of The Sun:"

When the paper was launched, a reporter of the Washington Post had asked its editor, Seth Lipsky, how the Sun would be able to compete against the New York Times, which had "eighty reporters" on its metropolitan desk. The Times might have 80 reporters, he replied, but they missed the story that taxes are too high, that the reason there is an apartment shortage is rent control, and that vouchers are a movement to rescue minority children from failing schools...

on April 16, 2002, the first issue of the newspaper hit the streets, 18 pages priced at 50 cents. The lead story was an interview with Ahmad Chalabi, identified as "the leader of the free, democratic Iraqi opposition." Mr. Chalabi warned that the Bush administration's planning for a post-invasion Iraq was "abysmal."

The interview, a major scoop, was often cited by those who suggested the Sun was an uncritical supporter of the decision to go to ground in Iraq...

At the 2004 Republican National Convention, the Sun's California-based national correspondent, Josh Gerstein, was stopped by security at an event and asked which newspaper he worked for. When he explained, the police phoned the newspaper and reached a receptionist, who, when asked whether the paper had a California bureau, responded no. Mr. Gerstein was promptly arrested and held for some hours until the confusion was sorted out, him no worse for the wear.

From the editorial "The Arc Of The Sun:"

The Bush tax cuts did unleash tremendous economic growth. Iraqis are building a better country in freedom. The expansion of charter schools in New York has improved educational outcomes. The Republican Party can nominate a presidential candidate who stands for welcoming immigrants to America...

We wouldn't want to overstate our accomplishments. We failed to make a profit, which was one of our goals. But neither would we want to understate our accomplishments. It is not nothing that when the Washington Post and the New York Times wanted to report on Arab oil money and monarchs funding the Clinton library, they quoted reporting by our Josh Gerstein. Or when the Wall Street Journal editorial page wanted to understand the roots of the financial crisis, it cited reporting by our Julie Satow.

Or that when President Bush nominated Michael Mukasey as attorney general after we suggested it in a New York Sun editorial, the White House quoted the front-page profile of the judge that had been written in the Sun by our Joseph Goldstein on the moment of his retirement...

We can only hope that some day in the future our own record will inspire some new generation of newspapermen and women with dreams to pick up the flag that today we put down. We hope it doesn't take 50 years for the next new start, but even if it does take that long, we hope that they have as much fun as we have had and meet with as much success.

Dear Writers,

In this economic climate, it seems the task of finding additional investors has proved too difficult. The New York Sun, which launched in 2002, will print its final edition on Monday, Sept. 29

The paper's founder, Seth Lipsky, wanted the paper to be a six-page, small-circulation broadsheet. But original backer Conrad had other plans!

“He felt the better approach would be to go for a newspaper that is not a quixotic paper operating on the margin like a six-page broadsheet,” Mr. Lipsky said, “but that one should go for what he called a ‘primary read,’ which he said would need to be a 16-page broadsheet with a sports page and a business page.”

The sports page has been consistently one of the best in the city, of course, but wealthy conservative Jews probably would've been more likely to subsidize that tiny broadsheet about Israeli issues and foreign policy with a local bent. They weren't going to switch from the Times (or the Journal even, where Murdoch is now trying out a similar "let's have a sports page" strategy).

As a result, the Sun never had any paid circulation worth speaking of. Lipsky says he's raised "a lot" of money to save the paper, but who knows what October will bring. Maybe they should go tabloid.

P.S. Anyone seriously thinking they'll miss the independent voice and rebellious spirit of this doomed broadsheet should probably remind themselves of this:

One former editor said the staff had drunk Champagne in the newsroom in 2003 when the American-led invasion of Iraq began. As at least one commentator noted in the wake of Mr. Lipsky’s letter, The Sun, in editorials, had mentioned Vice President Dick Cheney as “the one who would bring the most to the race” for president this year.

Damn good arts section, though.

[UPDATE: Jeff Bercovici notes that he posted his own copy of this yesterday afternoon. They really did hit the city's most discerning readers! Not us.]

Many things have changed since the Sun was founded: lead investor and Chicago Sun-Times owner Conrad Black went to jail, oil went above $100 a barrel, Israel went to war with Lebanon, Bill Buckley died and someone named "Julia Allison" gave birth to something called "microcelebrity," and the embarrassing unbridled jingoism unleashed by the events of September 11 greased the proverbial wheels of a prodigious bounty of lousy deals that would result mainly in death and disillusionment, the latter of which would eventually, mercifully, find itself directed at the Republican Party and the conservative movement that, in addition to God, granted it so much power. But here is what has not changed: conservatives do not really read, which is to say, of course conservatives read but not things that are like, long*, and those who do tend to compartmentalize the pastime as something rather far removed from their ideology, and if that's not the case, well, they would seem to be sufficiently alarmed by the defilement of their once-optimistic "movement" to be directing their information demands at suppliers of cruder, less ideologically-refined sources than the Sun. Of course, this is all blather and speculation; I am merely stating what I believe to be the nature of business conditions in the niche. But it is not just the Rupert Murdochs of the conservative media ideologically softening these days; the nuttycon Washington Times would seem to be on a bid to "mainstream" itself, while the talking heads and bloggingheads running such outlets as the National Review seem primarily to be brokering in new cute phrases: Sam's Club Republicans! The Sourpuss Vote! We've been Palinized!
We think you'll agree, if there's anything the industry needs right now, it's de-Palinization.

*Yeah, case in point: NONE of those guys actually read the Bible.

Writes our tipster:

Note that we were still expected to wear suits, ties, and dress shirts every fucking day (except "casual" Sunday, when we were "allowed" to wear blazers with dress shirts ties and dress pants), thus leading to at least $100 in dry cleaning costs alone over the course of the summer.

There are internships with far looser rules at news organizations that are better known, better regarded, less slimy, less politically biased and less racist than the wingnut-driven Sun. Some of them even pay! But there is a seemingly endless supply of young writers desperate for some — any! — sort of experience, even if it's at an anemic daily newspaper that doubles as an "animal shelter for unemployed New York writers" and comes complete with the draconian rules required to keep order in such a zoo.

By the way: In addition to the rules above, uppity interns, remember never to say anything nice about a filthy red communist!

Conscious rappers touch on this now and then, but are much more interested in telling us that black criminals are victims of the system. A recent example: "Black Thought" on The Roots' new album tells us, "It is what it is, because of what it was, I did what I did, 'cause it does what it does."

OUTRAGEOUS.

So: indeed, it's "not all like that." But if the folks known as the hiphop generation are learning their politics from "conscious" rap, there is little hope for our future.

Oh, John McWhorter, that's where you're wrong. The hip hop generation has a message for you: "I know I can/ Be what I wanna be/ If I work hard at it/ I'll be where I wanna be." Dig it, old man!

[NYS]

During the primary campaign, Mr. Obama was sharply critical of the company. He has said he will not shop there and that Wal-Mart should pay "a living wage."

At a January debate, Mr. Obama seemed to play to Wal-Mart's critics when he suggested that Senator Clinton's six-year stint on the company's board paled in comparison to his record as a community organizer in Chicago. "While I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart," Mr. Obama said, in one of his sharpest jabs at Mrs. Clinton.

That reporting comes from the Sun, by the way, New York's least-favorite conservative daily newspaper. They are thrilled by this appointment, as an editorial reveals: "Senator Obama's choice of the left's most prominent defender of Wal-Mart, Jason Furman, as his campaign's economic policy director is a sign of hope for the Democrat of Illinois."

Well, we're glad they're happy.

it sounds like a great movie, a post-millennial Home Alone for the big city: the little scamp is overjoyed at first, running through the ladies' underwear department, then befriending a gruff security guard with a heart of gold, then bedding down for the night in the home furniture section. But the kid just dutifully took the subway (which is apparently not safe for kids) home: