Now this — this is just ridiculous. A week into the Sun's publishing career, and it's been reduced to a 12-page pitch for the AP Wire (OK, 10 if you don't count the two full-page ads). Of the 25 news stories that ran in today's paper, a full 15 came from the Associated Press, including every piece on pages 2 and 7 and all save one on page 3. Of the rest, four came from the Daily Telegraph (otherwise known as the Sun's foreign desk). Which, if you're doing the math, leaves a grand total of six news stories penned by Sun reporters (two of which carry the vague "Staff Reporter of the Sun" byline). Is this what $20 million buys these days? Access to wire services? Better yet, is this what 50 cents buys? Content anyone can access through Yahoo?

The Sun's lead story is, for once, a solid example of journalism. Too bad it's also a softball piece about the plunge in med school applications around the city, the sort of piece you might expect on the inside fold of a college daily. Rachel Kovner, for once getting all the facts in, asks such hard-hitting questions as "what happened to the days when everyone wanted to be on ER?" But she fails to tell us why this matters, given that "nationwide data isn't available yet" and "admissions deans said they see signs the decline is coming to an end." Is it possible that New Yorkers simply would rather run up expense accounts in Tribeca than give Botox injections to 80-year-olds on the Upper East Side? Rachel, your readers are dying to know. The only reason Smarternysun can see for putting this in the lead is that there was nothing else to run — can't start off with a wire piece, can't start off with an anonymous author, can't start off with Ben Smith's "Danger Lurks in Defective Mailboxes." Med school it is. Or isn't.