The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918O'Brien, Frank Michael
History
The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918
O'Brien, Frank Michael
Sun (New York, N.Y. : 1833)
It was not until May, 1862, that the _Sun_ abandoned the ancient custom
of giving a large part of the first page to advertising. This reform
came late, perhaps because Moses S. Beach was out of the _Sun_ in the
early months of the war.
On August 6, 1860, the control of the paper had passed from Mr. Beach
to Archibald M. Morrison, a rich young man of religious fervour, who
was prompted by other religious enthusiasts to get the _Sun_ and use
it for evangelical purposes. Mr. Morrison gave Mr. Beach one hundred
thousand dollars for the good-will of the paper, and agreed to pay
a rental for the material. Mr. Beach retained the ownership of the
building, of the presses, and, indeed, of every piece of type.
The new proprietors of the _Sun_ held a prayer-meeting at noon every
day in the editorial rooms. They also injected a bit of religion into
the columns by printing on the first page reports of prayer-meetings
in the Sailors’ Home and of the doings of missionaries in Syria and
elsewhere. In spite of the new spirit that pervaded the office,
however, it was still possible for the unregenerate old subscriber to
find some little space devoted to the fistic clashes of Heenan and
Morrissey. Flies are not caught with vinegar.
The new management made a sort of department paper of the _Sun_, the
front page being divided with the headings “Financial,” “Religious,”
“Criminal,” “Calamities,” “Foreign Items,” “Business Items,” and
“Miscellaneous.” It was not a bad newspaper, and it was quite possible
that some business men would prefer it to the Beach kind of sheet; but
it is certain that the advertisers were not attracted and that some
readers were repelled. One of the latter climbed the stairs of the
building at Fulton and Nassau Streets early one morning and nailed
to the door of the editorial rooms a placard which read: “Be ye not
righteous overmuch!”
During the Morrison régime the _Sun_ refused to accept advertisements
on Sunday. Of course, the printers worked on Sunday night, getting out
Monday’s paper, but that was something else. The _Sun_ went so far
(July 23, 1861) as to urge that the Union generals should be forbidden
to attack the enemy on Sundays. “Our troops must have rest, and need
the Sabbath,” it said.
William C. Church, one of the rising young newspapermen of New York,
was induced to become the publisher under the _Sun’s_ new management.
He was only twenty-four years old, but he had had a good deal of
newspaper experience in assisting his father, the Rev. Pharcellus
Church, to edit and publish the New York _Chronicle_. After a few weeks
in the _Sun_ office, however, Mr. Church saw that the paper, though
daily treated with evangelical serum, was not likely to be a howling
success; and on December 10, 1860, four months after he took hold as
publisher, it was announced that Mr. Church had “withdrawn from the
publication of the _Sun_ for the purpose of spending some months in
European travel and correspondence for the paper.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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