The best dance coverage by a NYC Newspaper will cease tomorrow. The NY Sun has announced tomorrow's edition will be it's last.

NYSUN.com

Oh dear, this is not good. I always cringe when a print publication dies.

The dance coverage in the Sun was indeed admirable. Just last week they had a wonderful feature on the revival of Balanchine's Pithoprakta by the Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Alas.

The arts and culture pages and the sports pages were often excellent, but that's about all I can say. They've been doing everything short of trying to give it away for some time, so this is no great shock.

Aw this is terrible!

Actually, they tried that too:

Yup - they started delivering it to me unbidden. Not wanting to waste the paper, I called them and asked them to stop.

I would have warmed to the paper much more had it not been for the editorial section of the paper - frankly I would not subscribe even if asked for that reason. It is a shame, because the arts coverage was decent.

Although it's sad to see the arts coverage go, I suspect that the decline of the Sun has to do primarily with other more pressing issues, including the fact that its original and chief financial backer, Conrad (Lord) Black, is now in Federal prison for corporate fraud.

About a year ago I tried to read it daily for a couple of weeks. I found the news coverage -- for instance, the kind of story selected and the amount of space given to each -- to be spotty, unbalanced and very much influenced by the editors' (and their former patron's) political biases.

Those wishing to learn more about these matters should check the Wikipedia entry cited by Andrew73.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Sun

Nevertheless, Joel Lobenthal is a very interesting and extremely well-informed dance critic, and it is a terrrible shame that he loses this forum in which to do what he does so well. I always enjoy and learn from reading him --

This is a shame, a damned shame.