April 11, 2002
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Oh How Marvelously Quirky and Quixotic!
My great uncle and godfather had a way of praising with faint damn, to mix up the old cliche. Once, when he was staying with me and working on a book, he noticed that I was not shod. "Oh, I think it's wonderful how informal you two are, wearing your bare feet around the house!" You didn't have to be a mind-reader to see just how "wonderful" he considered my exposed hobbit-feet.
Felicity Barringer achieves a similar tone covering the launching of the New York Sun for the New York Times. Since the Sun's managing editor is the well-known creator of Smartertimes, Ira Stoll, and the Sun's editorial voice will certainly stand in contrast to the Gray Lady, I can imagine the deafening harrumphing of old farts at the Times as the Sun's first issue goes to press.
Paper and Editor to Tilt at Liberal Windmillsreads the headline. Not too subtle. Pretenses of objectivity be damned!
On the business side, he and his circulation director hope his new newspaper, The New York Sun, will pick up 1,000 paying customers a month in a city whose English-language dailies have lost an average of 600 daily newspaper customers a month in the past decade.If it succeeds, The Sun, which will make its first appearance next Tuesday, will have a paid circulation of 8,000 by the end of the year, with more to come. At 8,000, it would have the same circulation as another city daily, American Metal Market.
How pathetic, how small! How..amusing. But they have dug up some dirt on publisher Seth Lipsky:
Mr. Goldberg, who succeeded Mr. Lipsky as editor of The Forward in May 2000, when the heirs of the socialist founders dismissed Mr. Lipsky, said that "the accusation against him here from both the ownership and most of the readership was that a slim factoid would be made into a major debate."Mr. Goldberg continued, "It would say `Jewish Community Divided' when one person objected to something."
But, he said, Mr. Lipsky's "Pickwickian charm, his oddballness" disarm his natural antagonists.
"Pickwickian", "oddballness", how charming!
With something like 1,300 charter subscribers, according to The Sun's circulation director, profitability will take "several years," Mr. Lipsky said.Other observers are less optimistic. "It's going to lose a lot of money for a long time," said Mr. Stern. "Forever. But guess what? I don't think that's the defining issue. Lipsky will put out one terrific product. Which may be the dividend his investors really want."
In other words, it's a money-pit motivated by marginalized, yet entertaining ideologues. Nice objective reportage, Ms. Barringer! I'm surprised I haven't seen a missive on this from Ira Stoll.
Who is this model of probity "Mr. Stern"? He appears nowhere else in the article. Is it a pseudonym for the paternal judgement of the Times, or is he a real person? I'd ask the Times to edit their own work better but that might be pickwickian or quixotic of me. Anyway,I think all these oddball lapses in objectivity and small editorial mistakes are so charming and...winsome.
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at April 11, 2002 11:15 PM | Technorati inbound links