Possibly taking a cue from yesterday's Smarternysun, today's Sun — still only 12 pages — moved its foreign desk out of London's Daily Telegraph and into the Jerusalem Post. Today's lead, "Israel Says It'll Delay U.N. Probe of Killings," is a wire story from the Post, as are two more stories on Page 2.

The paper can't possibly have its own foreign desk at this stage of the game, but why on earth would the Sun — which claims that "every issue revolves around New York" — ever lead off with a wire, especially one filed in Jerusalem? What kind of commitment is that to New York news? And as if that weren't bad enough, the lead photo is an enormous, gruesome three-column shot of a dead suspected Palestinian informer, hanging upside down from a scaffolding. Admittedly, men in suits don't make for dynamic shots the way murdered Palestinians do, but if this is a newspaper about New York for New Yorkers, how about some New York in the lead spot?

To make things worse, the second, third and fourth stories are all about New York, and are generally wonderful investigative pieces. One examines the political dynamic between the mayor's office, the school chancellor's office and the state assembly, regarding the fate of Schools Chancellor Harold Levy. Another uncovers a confidential report about a shady school construction project and a third looks at cardiac care in Brooklyn. Why, with this boon of hard work from Sun staffers, would its editors reward the J-Post with the lead story?

---

Reading the Sun, you might think the animal lobby is a powerful force with the American media. For the third time in as many days, the paper went with a story about "Forgea, the sea dog that has been drifting alone through the Pacific Ocean south of Hawaii on an abandoned Indonesian tanker for three weeks." Although the story no doubt holds interest for the paper's many seafaring and canine-loving readers, we are left to wonder about the story's daily inchings closer to the fold, especially at the expense of two Sun originals, which remain tethered to the bottom of the page.

---

Maybe the Sun is self-conscious about its increasingly obvious affection — almost an internal cult — for Mayor Mike Bloomberg. One story, "Where Mayor Bloomberg Goes for His Lunch," presumably means to examine the Mayor's greasy eating habits as though they represent something larger about his administration. But the story is really just a chronicle of where and when the Mayor eats, sprinkled with brief comparisons to the eating habits of Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani. The photograph (courtesy of the photojournalists at Little Italy Pizza) has a caption reading "Bloomberg Eats: Billionaire mayor has populist tastes, lunchwise," which dovetails with the story's surprised and admiring tone: The rich guy in City Hall eats with the plebeians. Fascinating.

The other gratuitous Bloomberg story, "Macy's Marks First Century in Business," leads with Bloomberg's speech at the 100th anniversary of Macy's Herald Square. It's hard to see this as news, but not too hard to see where Anna Schneider-Mayerson did the reporting: The story reads like a press release for Macy's, listing the store's wares and the ways it contrasts with Bergdorf's and Bloomingdale's. Strangest of all is how Schneider-Mayerson cites her sources. They are, according to her, "a stylish Puerto Rican makeup artist," "a German tourist," "a slight, manicured woman in her late 60s" and "a petite blonde." The only source actually from Macy's gets no such attribution; she is simply "the chief clerk for more than 30 years."