The Sun (New York City)
The Sun was a New York newspaper published from 1833 until 1950. It was considered a serious paper,[2] like the city's two more successful broadsheets, The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. The Sun was the first successful penny daily newspaper in the United States, and was for a time, the most successful newspaper in America.[3][4]
For the similarly-named 21st century broadsheet and news site, see The New York Sun.Type
Daily newspaper
Moses Yale (1835)
Frank Munsey (1916)
Benjamin Day (1833)
1833
January 4, 1950
The New York Sun (2002)
The paper had a central focus on crime news, in which it was a pioneer, and was the first journal to hire a police reporter.[5][6] Its audience was primarily working class readers.
The Sun is well-known for publishing the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, as well as Francis Pharcellus Church's 1897 editorial containing the line "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus".
It merged with the New York World-Telegram in 1950.
![New York Harbor, receiving news from Europe, Great Western, 1838[42]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Great_Western_and_New_York_in_New_York_Harbor%2C_April_23%2C_1838.jpg/140px-Great_Western_and_New_York_in_New_York_Harbor%2C_April_23%2C_1838.jpg)
The Sun first gained notice for its central role in the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, a fabricated story of life and civilization on the Moon which the paper falsely attributed to British astronomer John Herschel and never retracted.[35] The hoax featured man-bat creatures named the "Vespertilio-homo" that inhabited the moon and built temples. A Yale University delegation was sent to look after the article, and the whole story created much sensation at the time.[19]
On April 13, 1844, The Sun published a story by Edgar Allan Poe now known as "The Balloon-Hoax", retracted two days after publication. The story told of an imagined Atlantic crossing by hot-air balloon.[36]
Today the paper is best known for the 1897 editorial "Is There a Santa Claus?" (commonly referred to as "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus"), written by Francis Pharcellus Church.[37]
John B. Bogart, city editor of The Sun between 1873 and 1890, made what is perhaps the most frequently quoted definition of the journalistic endeavor: "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news."[38] (The quotation is frequently attributed to Charles Dana, The Sun editor and part-owner between 1868 and his death in 1897.)
From 1912, Don Marquis wrote a regular column, 'The Sundial', for the Evening Sun. In 1916, he used this to introduce his characters Archy and Mehitabel.[39]
In 1926, The Sun published a review by John Grierson of Robert Flaherty's film Moana, in which Grierson said the film had "documentary value". This is considered the origin of the term "documentary film".[40]
The newspaper's editorial cartoonist, Rube Goldberg, received the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for his cartoon, Peace Today. In 1949, The Sun won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for a groundbreaking series of articles by Malcolm Johnson, "Crime on the Waterfront". The series served as the basis for the 1954 movie On the Waterfront.
The Sun's first female reporter was Emily Verdery Bettey, hired in 1868. Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd was hired as a reporter and fashion editor in the 1880s. Brainerd was one of the first women to become a professional editor, and perhaps the first full-time fashion editor in American newspaper history.
In 1881, the heroic legend of sheriff Bartholomew Masterson, known as "Bat Masterson", started from the coverage of a Sun reporter whom he had duped.[41] He was a companion of Buffalo Bill, and fought at the Battle of Dodge City War, and was later the subject of a book titled Gunfighter in Gotham and the American TV series Bat Masterson.[41]
