Wednesday, May 7, 2008 – It Shines for All

From our friend, the high-powered Wall Street attorney, a clock in lower Manhattan –

Photograph copyright © M. A. Hewitt, 2008, all rights reserved, used with permission

Don't confuse the current New York Sun with the original New York Sun:

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"); an evening edition was introduced in 1887. The morning edition of The Sun was subsumed by the New York Herald in 1919. The Evening Sun 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.

During 2002, a new newspaper was launched in New York with the same name but no other association with the original Sun.

The Sun first became famous for its central role in the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. On April 13, 1844, The Sun published "The Balloon-Hoax" by Edgar Allan Poe, a hoax about an alleged Atlantic crossing by balloon. Today it 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.

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." (The quotation is frequently attributed to Charles Dana, Sun editor and part-owner between 1868 and 1897.)

In 1947-48, the Sun featured a groundbreaking series of articles by Malcolm Johnson, "Crime on the Waterfront," that won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting in 1949. The series served as the basis for the 1954 movie On the Waterfront.

In the year 1868 the New York Sun hired their first female reporter by the name of Emily Verdery Bettey. The Sun hired Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd as a reporter and fashion editor in the 1880s; she was one of the first professional female editors, and perhaps the first full-time fashion editor, of any American newspaper.

The masthead of the original Sun is visible in a montage of newspaper clippings in a scene of the 1972 film The Godfather.

All text and photos, unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 - Alan M. Pavlik