How The New York Sun, Gone Since 2008, Explains Politics in 2018
In many ways, the Sun's decade-old coverage bears on issues and personalities in contemporary headlines.
Old newspapers are said to be good for wrapping fish or perhaps informing historians. For Ira Stoll, one of the founders of the now-defunct The New York Sun, however, the paper's archives can be a useful and relevant guide to the present moment—from the perspective of 10 years ago, when the Sun ceased publishing.
Watching President Trump's presidency shadowed by the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller: the 2004 Sun editorial "The Boldness of the President." It recounted how a special prosecutor's investigation of President Clinton had, fulfilling Justice Scalia's warning, sapped the president's boldness in the face of a gathering threat by Al Qaeda.
Reading about Trump's strained relations with his attorney general, Jeff Sessions: the Sun's coverage of an invitation that then-Senator Sessions issued Trump to testify before Congress about excessively costly plans to renovate the United Nations headquarters—where the two men first publicly crossed paths.
On Trump in general: a Sun piece from 2004, observing, "There's a contempt for Mr. Trump among certain of New York's elites."
In all these ways, the Sun's decade-old coverage bears on issues and personalities in contemporary headlines, writes Stoll.