Soccer Dad

The origin of moon bats

The founder of the recently shuttered NY Sun, Seth Lipsky, reviews a book about an earlier incarnation of the newspaper whose name he appropriated. The book focuses on an incident from the early days of the original New York Sun, where it scooped everyone else on the existence of strange creatures living on the moon.

The Sun was in business for two years when Day brought in as editor a Briton, Richard Adams Locke. Locke was perusing the premier issue of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, Mr. Goodman tells us, when he came across an article called "The Moon and Its Inhabitants." It inspired the Sun's series, written anonymously, about how the operator of a powerful new telescope directed it at the moon only to discover vast forests and fields of poppies and lunar animals.

First to be sighted was a herd of quadrupeds and then an animal that the Sun said "would be classified on earth as a monster," a bluish-gray thing about the size of a goat but with a single horn in the center of its head. The details were run out in the Sun over several days, culminating in a report of how Dr. John Herschel, the operator of the telescope, and his team spied what Mr. Goodman calls "four flocks of large winged creatures." The creatures were seen "descending in a slow, even motion from the cliffs to the plain, where they landed and, their wings disappearing behind them, began walking, erect and dignified, toward a nearby forest."

Mr. Lipsky notes at the end of his review that newspapers have their own fanciful tales nowadays, though not nearly as exotic.

It's easy to laugh at all this. Today newspaper circulation gimmicks tend to be tamer -- global warming, say, or the threat of immigration, or the miracle balm of higher taxes. But then, circulation has been falling.

Speaking of the Sun, I had wanted to blog about when it closed, but I didn't so let me use this opportunity to acknowledge the Sun.

When the Sun closed, I forgot that it too played a role in my becoming a blogger. In the few years before it launched, Lipsky's partner, Ira Stoll ran a website called Smarter Times devoted to criticism of the reporting and bias in the New York Times. It was sort of like Best of the Web Today, but with a focus only on the New York Times. I sent a few entries that Stoll used.

Also here are some appreciation of the Sun, from Jewish Current Issues, Best of the Web Today and Baseball Prospectus.