That the Sun lasted the six-and-a-half years it did is something of a miracle. Times haven't exactly been favorable to newspapers, and a proudly right-wing paper in a liberal city — one already stuffed with newspapers — didn't seem like a winning proposition. If those weren't problems enough, the Sun had other issues. There were its soap-operaesque internal battles, chronicled with malicious glee by Gawker and the greater blogosphere. There were its occasionally wacky editorial stands, like its call for Brooklyn to secede, its undying love for the gold standard, its suggestion that political protesters be tried for treason. There were its pugnacious editors, Seth Lipsky and Ira Stoll, always spoiling for a fight and trash-talking the competition. The paper was perpetually short-staffed — its reporters regularly poached by larger papers. Yet somehow the small, harried staff of the Sun put out a consistently interesting paper, which included the best arts pages in the country, a crossword second only to the New York Times's, and lots of scoops.

Labels: journos, shameless self-promotion

"The satirist in me cries out for a McCain-Palin administration. This would be an embarrassment of riches," Christopher Buckley, famed wit and son of William F., tells me. Alas, he's a reluctant Obamacon--"I think he has a first-class temperament" --even though he fears that a Barack Obama presidency will be "boring." Trying to cheer himself up, he allows that Joe Biden will probably provide some "comic fodder."

If Buckley seems worried, that's because he has a new book to write. An amazingly prolific novelist ("I've got a mortgage to pay"), he's just published his 13th book, Supreme Courtship, and already has another on the way, Losing Mum and Pup, a tribute to his parents. He needs a new subject--fast.