• NY Post, Friday, February 3, 2006 10:48 AM

Keith Kelly, the New York Post's publishing-industry columnist, says it "appears to be a less than sunny day for the right-leaning broadsheet New York Sun." The paper has largely abandoned its costly efforts to establish a paid-subscriber base in Manhattan. Instead, it is moving to free distribution, concentrating on the city's so-called elite neighborhoods. The hope is that this will attract advertisers, many of whom have resisted coming into the thin daily paper.  Explaining the Sun's decision, its circulation president, August Fields, told Kelly, "The competitive environment in New York ranks among the fiercest in the world. The free dailes [Metro, amNewYork] add to that competition, but so does growth in Internet usage."  How's the free-distribution strategy working? "So far," Kelly reports, "the results are questionable." He notes anecdotal evidence that apartment dwellers around town are rejecting the free paper. The New York Sun is no longer tracked by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

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