Milestones
The Sun first became famous for its central role in the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. On April 13, 1844, The Sun published "The Balloon-Hoax" by Edgar Allan Poe, a hoax about an alleged Atlantic crossing by balloon.
Today the paper is best known for the 1897 editorial "Is There a Santa Claus?" (commonly referred to as "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus"), written by Francis Pharcellus Church.
John B. Bogart, city editor of The Sun between 1873 and 1890, made what is perhaps the most frequently quoted definition of the journalistic endeavor: "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news." (The quotation is frequently attributed to Charles Dana, Sun editor and part-owner between 1868 and 1897.)
In 1947–48, the Sun featured a groundbreaking series of articles by Malcolm Johnson, "Crime on the Waterfront," that won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting in 1949. The series served as the basis for the 1954 movie On the Waterfront.
The Sun's first female reporter was Emily Verdery Bettey, hired in 1868. Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd was hired as a reporter and fashion editor in the 1880s; she was one of the first women to become a professional editor, and perhaps the first full-time fashion editor, in American newspaper history.
Read more about this topic: The Sun (New York)