Who

Lipsky is editor of the New York Sun, the daily newspaper founded in 2002 as a right-wing antidote to the New York Times.

Backstory

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Massachusetts, Lipsky served as a reporter for military paper Stars and Stripes during the Vietnam War. In 1971, he went to work at the Wall Street Journal, which is where he spent most of the next two decades, managing the Asian edition before moving back to the U.S. to oversee the editorial pages of the international editions. In 1990, he left to launch the English version of The Forward, the century-old Yiddish Jewish paper, where he wore a fedora in the newsroom as a tribute to old-school newspaper journalism. After clashes over the direction of the paper—Lipsky was a conservative, the Forward had a decidedly liberal tradition—he left and in 2002 revived the daily Sun.

Of note

The Sun was set up to be a conservative alternative to the New York Times. (In fact, Lipsky's right-hand at the paper is managing editor Ira Stoll, who ran SmarterTimes.com, an anti-New York Times website, before joining Lipsky.) Funded by a collection of neocons like Michael Steinhardt and Bruce Kovner—and unlike Rupert Murdoch's New York Post which leans right but is also a tabloid and dabbles in scandal—the Sun was established to provide a "serious" conservative viewpoint, and most of the editorials are written by Lipsky himself to ensure the paper's editorial voice jibes with the owners' stances. But some five years after launching, the Sun has had a tough time making a dent. According to reports, the paper loses as much as $25 million a year and Lipsky's difficulty attracting subscribers has resulted in free copies being distributed to residents of wealthy ZIP codes. Of course, the paper isn't (necessarily) in any danger of folding. Given how much money the owners have sitting in the bank—and that it's a political/personal mission, not necessarily an investment—the Sun could very well continue publishing for a long time to come.

For the record

Although the Sun shares the same name as the daily newspaper that existed earlier in the 20th century, there's no connection between the papers other than the name and motto.

Personal

Lipsky has been married to conservative pundit Amity Shlaes, whom he worked with on the European edition of the Journal, since 1988. They have three children and live in Brooklyn Heights.

No joke

A big backer of the war in Iraq, Lipsky is rumored to have christened the beginning of the fighting with a champagne toast in the newsroom.