The Sun (Lowell)
The Sun, also known as The Lowell Sun, is a daily newspaper based in Lowell, Massachusetts, United States, serving towns in Massachusetts around the Greater Lowell area and beyond. As of 2011, its average daily circulation was about 42,900 copies. It is owned by MediaNews Group of Colorado, which is owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital.[1][2]
Type
Kevin Corrado
Bruce Castleberry
August 10, 1878, as Lowell Weekly Sun
491 Dutton Street, Lowell, Massachusetts 01854 United States
42,899 Daily
47,897 Sunday (as of 2011)[3]
The Sun[edit]
The newspaper's headquarters are in the first floor of the former American Textile History Museum building in downtown Lowell. Before March 18, 2007, the newspaper occupied a succession of offices on Kearney Square, about half a mile away. One of the old news buildings, locally called "the Sunscraper," is a landmark high-rise topped with a huge neon "Sun" sign. The paper's most recent former home is across the street.[4]
The paper's editorials have, for decades, espoused a conservative bent in a city and state where Democratic voters overwhelm Republicans. In the 1970s, editor and firebrand Clement Costello, who was known for walking around in a cape, wrote that the U.S. should annex Mexico and was credited with helping to ruin John Kerry's chances of winning the 5th Congressional District seat in 1972. In 2004, the newspaper again made waves when it endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election instead of Kerry, who was then the junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts.
People[edit]
The Sun was once known beyond its circulation area as the home base of the late columnist Paul Sullivan, who until 2007 hosted a nighttime talk show on WBZ radio in Boston. Before the newspaper moved, he would regularly tout scoops from "Lowell's great newspaper at 15 Kearney Square."
One of the paper's most famous alumnus is Jack Kerouac, a Lowell native who worked as a sports reporter for The Sun before going on to greater fame as poet laureate to the Beat Generation.
Another Sun alumnus is Tom Squitieri, who won the Overseas Press Club Madeleine Dane Ross Award for his reporting on divided Cambodian refugee families living in Lowell and Thailand.[5] The Lowell Sun is the smallest independent newspaper to have won an OPC award.