• by Frank Saxe , November 5, 2002

If you live in New York, you may at times forget the city has four daily newspapers. Who can forget the Times (and its ubiquitous TV spots), or the daily breakfast of tabloid headlines courtesy of the Post and Daily News? The fourth, launched with a smattering of fan fare last April 16, is a lot easier to pass over at the crowded newsstand. Its publishers hope to change that oft-scoffed position, by taking a number of steps that will put it on parity with New York’s other dailies.

“We’ve had an encouraging start, but we have some work to do,” explains New York Sun president and editor Seth Lipsky. To that end, starting this week the Sun debuted a new design, a higher page count, and a lower, 25-cent newsstand price. Lipsky, who has helped launch four other newspapers, says each follows a similar pattern. “There is a rush of circulation and advertising at the beginning, then it falls off while the curiosity-seekers fall away and you begin to find your base.” That, he says, is followed by period of building – exactly where the Sun is today.

The Audit Bureau of Circulation is currently conducting its first audit of the Sun, although the company says it is on target. “We announced at the beginning that we would have 25,000 to 35,000 at the end of the first year and we’re on track to do that,” says Lipsky. Just-released circulation numbers show how far the Sun lags in circulation compared to New York’s three other dailies. The Times weekday edition averages 1,113,000 copies, followed by the Daily News with 715,050 daily readers, and the Post, which averaged 590,061 during the six months that ended September 30.

It's not secret advertisers like numbers, and the Sun’s redesign hopes to give them some they will like. The paper will go from a seven column page to six, it will increase its distribution to 5,000 retail outlets in the tri-state area, and it will expand its standard length. “A higher page count will allow us to do some better adjacencies with departmentalization in the internal layout of the newspaper,” says Lipsky, adding that the addition of a dedicated sports page and business page should also attract ad dollars.

Recently completed internal research has found that Sun readers are largely concentrated on New York’s Upper East and Upper West sides, giving the paper a concentrated readership both in terms of geography and demographics. “We have a high-end, affluent circulation,” says VP Chris Garrity. Those wealthier readers, largely in there forties and fifties, are also spending a remarkable 19.5 minutes with the paper. Remarkable because the Sun averages just a dozen pages, so readers are spending more than one minute per page. The national average of time spent reading is 15 minutes, but those figures are based on standard length newspapers several times the size of the Sun.

Garrity, who formerly served as group director for The New York Times’ national sales office, says this week’s design changes also allow the Sun to be more flexible to ad buyers. “We’re going to look at some different things if advertisers want something unusual, as in color or layout. We’re the new kids on the block and we’re going to try a little harder.” Trying harder also includes more flexibility on pricing, adds Garrity. “We are providing advertisers with a way to reach culture-loving New Yorkers, and there are not a lot of other options out there as cost-efficient.”

Advertisers in the Sun’s dawning existence have included Drexel Heritage, Virgin Airlines, Mercedes, Greenpoint Savings Bank, Soetheby’s art auction house, and several museums and art galleries. The Sun’s wine column has drawn in some dollars, so Garrity is optimistic that they will be able to sell against this week’s addition of columnists Jack Newfield, Jerry Capeci, Wallace Matthews, Michael Kinsley, and Andrew Sullivan, among others.

Lipsky readily admits the Sun will need to attract a lot more advertisers for the paper to survive during a soft advertising marketplace. Although they considered pushing back their mid-recession launch last spring, Lipsky insists they have no regrets about starting when they did. “In fact, you may want to launch into a downturn,” he says. “Because you’re going to struggle anyhow, and might as well get your bugs out of system and get everything working right to catch the upside of the cycle.”