Lowell Sun
Encyclopedia
The Sun is a daily newspaper based in Lowell
Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. According to the 2010 census, the city's population was 106,519. It is the fourth largest city in the state. Lowell and Cambridge are the county seats of Middlesex County...

, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, serving towns in Massachusetts and New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

 in the Greater Lowell
Greater Lowell
Greater Lowell is the name given to the city of Lowell, Massachusetts and its suburbs, mostly in Northern Middlesex County, Massachusetts and the Merrimack Valley....

 area and beyond. Its circulation is about 50,000. The paper, often called The Lowell Sun to distinguish it from other famous newspapers
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...

, has been owned since 1997 by MediaNews Group
MediaNews Group
MediaNews Group, based in Denver, Colorado, is one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States. It is privately owned and operates 56 daily newspapers in 12 states, with combined daily and Sunday circulation of approximately 2.4 million and 2.7 million, respectively...

.

The Sun

The newspaper's headquarters are in the first floor of the American Textile History Museum
American Textile History Museum
The American Textile History Museum , located in Lowell, Massachusetts, was founded as the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum in North Andover, Massachusetts in 1960 by Caroline Stevens Rogers...

 building in downtown Lowell. Before March 18, 2007, the newspaper occupied a succession of offices on Kearney Square, about half a mile away. One of the old news buildings, locally called "the Sunscraper," is a landmark high-rise topped with a huge neon "Sun" sign. The paper's most recent former home is across the street.

The paper's editorial
Editorial
An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...

s have, for decades, espoused a moderately conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

 bent in a city and state where Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 voters overwhelm Republicans
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

. In the 1970s, editor and firebrand Clement Costello, who was known for walking around in a cape and beret, wrote that the U.S. should annex Mexico and was credited with helping to ruin John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...

's chances of winning the 5th Congressional District seat in 1972. In 2004, the newspaper again made waves when it endorsed President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 for re-election instead of the hometown senator.

People

The Sun is known beyond its circulation area as the home base of columnist Paul Sullivan, who until 2007 hosted a nighttime talk show on WBZ AM radio
WBZ (AM)
WBZ is the call sign for an AM radio station in Boston, Massachusetts owned by CBS Radio, itself owned by the CBS Corporation. Originally based in and broadcast from Springfield, Massachusetts, WBZ was the first commercial radio station in the United States...

 in Boston. Before the newspaper moved, he would regularly tout scoops from "Lowell's great newspaper at 15 Kearney Square."

One of the paper's most famous alumni is Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

, a Lowell native who worked as a sports reporter for The Sun before going on to greater fame as poet laureate to the Beat Generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

.

History

Print shop owners and brothers John and Daniel Harrington founded the paper as a weekly
Weekly newspaper
A weekly newspaper is a general-news publication that is published on newsprint once or twice a week.Such newspapers tend to have smaller circulations than daily newspapers, and are usually based in less-populous communities or small, defined areas within large cities; often, they may cover a...

 in 1878. In its earliest years, The Sun provided the growing Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Roman Catholic and Irish .Note: the term is not used to describe a variant of Catholicism. More particularly, it is not a separate creed or sect in the sense that "Anglo-Catholic", "Old Catholic", "Eastern Orthodox Catholic" might be...

 population a voice in a mill city that was run by wealthy Protestant factory owners. Over the years, the paper outlasted its competitors to become the only major newspaper in Lowell, converting to a daily in 1892 and buying out its last competitor daily, the Courier-Citizen, in 1941; and starting a Lowell Sunday Sun in 1949 and buying out its only Sunday competition, the Lowell Sunday Telegram, in 1952.

The paper remained in the hands of John Harrington's descendants -- Thomas F. Costello, his sons John H. and Clement C. Costello, and grandson John H. Costello Jr. -- until it was purchased August 1, 1997, by MediaNews Group
MediaNews Group
MediaNews Group, based in Denver, Colorado, is one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States. It is privately owned and operates 56 daily newspapers in 12 states, with combined daily and Sunday circulation of approximately 2.4 million and 2.7 million, respectively...

. The newspaper's circulation at the time was 52,234, daily, and 55,804, Sunday.

When he purchased the paper, MediaNews CEO William Dean Singleton
William Dean Singleton
William Dean Singleton is an American newspaper executive. He is the chairman of the board of directors of the Associated Press, on which he has sat since 1999...

 noted that The Sun had "played a leading role in the development and growth of the Greater Lowell region", including downtown Lowell's rebirth and the establishment of minor-league baseball
Lowell Spinners
The Lowell Spinners are a Short-Season A minor league baseball affiliate of the Boston Red Sox.-History:Founded in 1996 after Clyde Smoll moved the Elmira Pioneers to Lowell, Massachusetts, the Spinners play in the New York - Penn League, which has a Short-Season A classification with 76 games a...

 and hockey teams in the city.

Following MediaNews' purchase (through The Sun) of Nashoba Publications weeklies covering several towns between Lowell and Fitchburg, the company in 2002 consolidated printing for The Sun, Nashoba and the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise
Sentinel & Enterprise
The Sentinel & Enterprise is a morning daily newspaper published in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, with a satellite news bureau in Leominster, Massachusetts. The newspaper covers local news in Fitchburg, Leominster and several nearby towns in northern Worcester County and northwest Middlesex County,...

at a new US$7 million press plant in Devens, Massachusetts. The move was said to have a beneficial effect on traffic in downtown Fitchburg and Lowell.
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