London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Which Way Forward for the Sun?

Marty Browne, a loyal reader from Queens, has brought to my attention that a hooplah has taken place in a few media outlets recently concerning our beloved New York Sun. Essentially, two memos written by Robert Messenger, deputy managing editor of the Sun, were somehow leaked to Gawker, Gotham’s flitty rumor mill, and posted on May 11, 2005.

The two memos deal with the state of the Sun at the moment and highlights some concerns over its long-term future, suggesting something of a ‘back to basics’ course for the three-year old conservative broadsheet. Our friend Mr. Browne was concerned enough to write a letter to the editor cautioning against changing our beloved Sun, bar adding a few more voices from the old right (advice which should be heeded). But having read the memo, I think it offers a frank analysis of the paper today and productive suggestions for the direction it should go in.

Essentially, what the Sun has to do is decide what it will be. It would be excellent if New York could have a general interest conservative broadsheet newspaper. However, given the overwhelmingly liberal market, I doubt the city’s ability to support such an endeavour; a luxury we sadly cannot afford.

In the mad media market of Manhattan, the most reliable option for the Sun is not as a general interest paper, a more financially-precarious model, but instead to find a niche in which to solidly rest. The weekly New York Observer, only born in the nineties, has a niche which gives it a fairly firm foundation provided it continues to serve it well, and the Sun should take note of that.

Thus the niche market is the way to go. What niche though? In my opinion, the New York Sun should be three things: 1) Conservative, 2) High-brow, 3) Metropolitan.

1) The Conservative Newspaper: The right-minded mustn’t just give up and concede New York as legitimately 100% liberal. This simply would not reflect reality, and the Sun must continue to provide a conservative voice on a higher scale than the populist New York Post.

2) The High-Brow Newspaper: Arts & Letters is already the most flourishing section and long may it continue. James Gardner on great on Architecture and I am absolutely loyal to the architectural historian Francis Morrone’s ‘Abroad in New York’ column every Monday. The Editorial and Opinion sections provide good sound argument and discussion, but could do with expansion.

3) The Metropolitan Newspaper: Of course it must continue to be an intrinsically New York paper. Coverage of the civic, political, and social sides of the city are essentially. This department has been pretty solid and consistent, and should only be augmented.

Should the New York Sun aim to be the conservative, high-brow, metropolitan newspaper, I believe it will be a winning formula, and set the newspaper well along on path towards becoming a great New York institution, if it isn’t one already.

(Continue reading for my thoughts on a few of Mr. Messenger’s points.)


“The current model has the newspaper positioned in the NYC market as a conservative general interest newspaper. I have over the last several weeks and months come to the conclusion that this, given the market, competitive environment and available resources is a fundamental error. One of the hurdles the Sun has encountered in the past is that we have tried to sell ads in the newspaper as if it was another general interest daily paper. This belies a lack of understanding about both audience and product. The Sun offers many of the features of a general interest daily; however it is, in fact, more of niche product catering to a specific audience with equally specific features and benefits.”

This is true, as said above.

“Opinion

We should consider adding a third page and modeling our design more on the Guardian’s comment section. We couldn’t go wrong adding more opinion and it plays well nationally on the web, too.”

A third page would be a welcome addition. The opinions should range from liberal conservatives like Andrew Sullivan all the way to the Buchananites and have everything in between. Right now the opinion section suffers from too much neo-conservatism, which may be all the rage but is not all that interesting. Opinion should be broad and deep.

“Arts

This section and our coverage is a true success story for the newspaper. It would be nice to get more reported pieces in and to do two-sections each day, but the one thing that absolutely needs work is our ad sales against this section.

We simply aren’t selling the city’s best arts coverage enough. It needs a second dedicated sales rep who can, along with the current rep, focus exclusively on this category. Sales are interviewing candidates now.

We can get a great deal more advertising out of our reputation in this area.”

I’ve always thought that the Sun’s Arts & Letters department is superb, and better than anything else in town. I read about Caravaggio exhibitions not in British newspapers (which are heading continually downmarket) but in the New York Sun. The quality of arts coverage means the Sun should be a daily read of any seriously intellectual-minded New Yorker.

“Sports

A generally great section, but under appreciated section. Strategically we need to make decision with respect to both sports and business. In essence we do not have the resources or cash to maintain both sections in a viable and quality format. One will have to take the priority.”

I would have no qualms with elminating this section completely, but perhaps it would be best to keep one to two pages, for their own sake.

“Metro / Local

This is a critical section for the Sun. However, we need to put more into it, in terms of reporters and pages. Adding two or three cheap young reporters and a deputy editor will put this section on a solid footing. We should be cutting elsewhere to make this section a major player in the city.”

The Sun has been very solid in this department and must continue to be.

“Features

This section is un-ambitious and generally off the map in the topics and pieces it runs. We should kill the daily section and move forward in a different way. In addition it lacks the planning which allows the lead time needed to sell ads in this category.

Home, parenting, health should become occasional special sections.

Eugenia Klopsis should move to the news section.

Food and Wine should continue as a weekly section with a much greater emphasis on the things our readers want in NY dining. Food, like real estate, dominates the social discourse among our ideal audience. We should devote four pages a week to this for six months and see how the ads follow from a better package with ratings and recommendations for NYC dining. Pia Catton would be the ideal editor.

Travel should become a bimonthly and eventually monthly supplemental section with a focus on selling ads.

We should maintain our regular fashion week coverage, which is excellent and cost-effective.”

I’ve always though the occasional features pages like Home, Parenting, Health, and Travel were completly uninteresting and I never read them. I wouldn’t mind ditching them altogether, but the suggestion for a bimonthly/monthly Travel supplement sounds like a good idea. Food and Wine, on the other hand, has proved itself interesting and is worth reading. Fashion isn’t my bag, but I’d keep it nonetheless.

“Business

Given the traditional coverage in the Times, WSJ, FT, IBD and flair of the Post, this is clearly and area where we can’t compete without spending more money, significantly more money.

One option is to cut the section down to a daily page that summarizes the biz news and includes a small number of the columnists – one column a day with the authors on a set sked? Peek and Dorfman will fill most of the slots. We are not getting value for money with our business pages,
which amount to 12 a week with little individuality.

Careers and Personal Finance should be killed.”

Another section I wouldn’t mind seeing the end of, especially since we have entire newspapers in New York devoted to business which take care of it pretty effectively (as mentioned, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Investors Business Daily). Still, it would be good to keep a daily page.

“Obituaries

Obits is another place where we don’t get value for money. I (Robert) love reading obituaries, but we have access to the copy of the two finest obit sections around – the Telegraph and the LA Times – we can get out an obits page everyday without a full-time editor. [Redacted] has done some nice work, but this work can replaced with wires without impacting the overall quality or
uniqueness of the paper.”

The Sun has seen fit to reprint some of the excellent Telegraph obituaries. It would be a great and valuable resource for the city if the Sun invested in a high-quality obit department, not just for the big movers and shakers, but for the folks who are the backbone of the city as well.

“Real Estate

This is a very important weekly section for us. We should move it to a different day and make sure that it has a smart editorial direction each week. It should, ideally, be 3-4 pages per week.

It is however the case study of advertising returns on space. We have recently cut it back in page count in an effort to make the papers profitable on a contribution basis. This is the right model. For the section to grow, the line rates and revenue per page also need to grow accordingly.”

Real estate (that’s the Property section, for the UKers) is one of the more interesting sections, and one I enjoy greatly. The real estate section of the Times is the part of that paper I read regularly. The Sun should exceed it in quality; it does not yet.

Mr. Messenger also suggests ditching the classifieds and hiring an art director, and is right on both counts.

Published at 10:25 am on Friday 13 May 2005. Categories: New York Newspapers Tags: , .
Leave a comment

NAME (required)

EMAIL (required)

WEBSITE (not required)

COMMENT

Home | About | Contact | Paginated Index | Twitter | Facebook | RSS/Atom Feed
andrewcusack.com | © Andrew Cusack 2004-present (Unless otherwise stated)