With Dovid Efune reportedly in exclusive talks to acquire The Daily Telegraph Press Gazette has taken a closer look at his current title, the New York Sun, an illustrious title which now has a relatively small online audience.
Since acquiring The New York Sun Efune, a British-born former editor of the New York-based, Jewish-focused newspaper Algemeiner Journal, has set about turning it into a digitally-focused subscriptions business not unlike The Telegraph.
And he appears to have had some success building it up – though it remains a far smaller business than the one he’s now seeking to take over.
What is The New York Sun, and how widely read is it?
The New York Sun models itself as the successor to The Sun, a historic New York City broadsheet which was published between 1833 and 1950 (and should not be confused with Rupert Murdoch’s UK Sun, which also has a presence in the city). Charles A Dana, one of the original Sun’s most prominent editors, is one of the people (along with Daily Mail founder Lord Northcliffe) often credited with originating the classic “man bites dog” adage about what makes a news story.
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The modern New York Sun was launched in 2002 with the backing of a group of investors that included Conrad Black, who was the proprietor of The Telegraph at the time. Black now contributes a column to the Sun approximately once a week.
That iteration of the Sun too shuttered in 2008, but continued publishing intermittently online until it was bought by Efune in a cash and stock deal from editor Seth Lipsky in November 2021. The terms of that deal have not been made public, but Lipsky has remained on as editor in chief.
Efune’s version of The New York Sun, which has remained online only, launched the following February and appears to have seen some success. Similarweb data indicates its website, nysun.com, received a monthly average of 134,200 visitors in the fourth quarter of 2021, which by the third quarter of this year had increased by 485% to 785,100.
The title still appears to be relatively obscure in its home market, however. Its monthly visits in September 2024 (678,640) are still well behind those of other New York City websites such as Gothamist (3.32 million), NBC New York (4.35 million) and the New York Daily News (5.66 million).
Nationally and internationally focused giants the New York Post and New York Times, meanwhile, far outstrip the whole group for visits.
Anecdotally, too, The New York Sun does not yet appear to be a mainstay of the New York media scene. Among ten New Yorkers Press Gazette spoke to – four of them journalists – none could remember encountering a New York Sun story over the past few years.
One journalist said: “I can say with certainty I have never read anything from The New York Sun or seen it in the wild – I thought that was the made up paper Carrie writes for in Sex and the City.” (That fictional paper is The New York Star.)
The New York Sun's content is not just New York-focused. At time of writing, the top stories on the front page covered military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, Hunter Biden re-filing a lawsuit against Fox News and Israel launching new airstrikes on Lebanon.
Who reads The New York Sun, and how does its business work?
The New York Sun said at launch that it wanted to draw 80% of its revenue from subscriptions, and in a statement to Press Gazette company spokesperson Jonathan Marder said "the vast majority of The Sun's revenue comes from our subscriptions business".
Marder did not disclose how many subscribers the Sun has, but said they "number in the tens of thousands" - a figure that Efune wrote in February this year had increased "500%" since he took over.
Readers must register to access any content, and registering provides readers with two free articles before they hit the paywall.
A basic “Sun Reader” subscription provides full access past the paywall and an ad-free reading experience and costs $120 a year. The site also offers two premium subscription offerings: a “Sun Member” subscription tier which costs $250 a year and also includes “podcasts, member forums and VIP livestreams” and crossword access and a “Sun Founder” tier, charged at $2,500, which adds into the deal “weekly briefings from senior editorial staff” and “monthly invitations to exclusive VIP events”.
The site takes advertisements and runs in-person events that are often held at its offices at 300 Madison Avenue. Despite its relatively small web traffic, the publisher attracts well-known figures for its events: most recently they have included interviews with the likes of former presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz and lawyer Alan Dershowitz, as well as a brunch with the now scandal-engulfed mayor of New York Eric Adams.
Marder told Press Gazette the site achieves most of its distribution through two daily newsletters that "carry the news to over 1.4 million subscribers on weekdays". The site's advertiser page claims the Sun's newsletters have an average open rate of 55%, although it should be noted that email open rates are significantly inflated by the large number of people who use iPhones because Apple’s email client automatically makes it look as though an email has been opened.
The same page provides some insights into the make up of nysun.com's audience at the time it was acquired by Efune. The readership appears to skew older, with 60% of the audience aged 45 and above. (This may account for why so few of the New Yorkers Press Gazette asked, who were all younger than 40, had encountered the Sun.)
Like The Telegraph, New York Sun readers are also reputedly wealthier than the average American: the website says 25% of its readers make between $100,000 and $200,000 a year (versus 23% in the US at large in 2020, per the site) and 15% of them make more than $200,000 (versus 10%).
They are also more likely to be homeowners (95% versus 65% of Americans), more likely to be college educated (68.5% versus 37.5%) and more likely to hold a graduate degree (35.4% versus 13%).
The New York Sun names 32 editorial contributors on its about page, of whom eight are listed either as staff reporters or correspondents and 13 have editor titles. The remainder are largely identified as contributors, columnists or critics, including figures such as Fox Business host Larry Kudlow and Conrad Black. A further eight people are identified on the Sun’s Linkedin page as holding commercial roles at the business, for example account managers and sales assistants.
In his email to Press Gazette, Marder emphasised a continuity between the old 19th century newspaper and the publication as it exists today, saying The New York Sun "has a special place in the hearts of many Americans".
"The Sun played a central role in shaping modern American journalism in a wide variety of areas. The Sun hired the first paperboy on its second day in print. The Associated Press was founded in our offices. We introduced crime reporting and fashion coverage. We hired Emily Verdery Battey, the first woman reporter in American journalism, in 1875. In 1897 we published the most reprinted editorial of all time, 'Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus.' The Sun has also been awarded Pulitzer Prizes, including, famously, for its dogged coverage of crime at the Brooklyn docks that later hit the silver screen in 'On the Waterfront,' starring Marlon Brando."
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