WWD

BAD NEWS ALL AROUND: Media companies, like everyone else, were hit hard Monday by the collapse in congressional efforts to pass the $700 billion bailout plan. Shares in News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, sank 9.6 percent to close at $11.77, while the New York Times Co. fell 3.8 percent to $14.35, and shares in The Washington Post Co. dropped 4.2 percent to $540. Over at Time Warner Inc., shares fell 9.2 percent to $12.90.

And, in further bad news for print media, today’s edition of The New York Sun will be its last. The broadsheet, which published its first issue a few months after Sept. 11, 2001, with backing from the likes of former press baron/now convict Conrad Black, didn’t get the necessary funding it needed to stay in business. “Nearly seven years later, our editors and backers are even more of the view that there is indeed a place for the kind of intelligent, thoughtful broadsheet we envision in our city, which is why we are scrambling to find others who share this vision and the sense of possibility,” wrote editor in chief Seth Lipsky, in a letter to readers that ran on Sept. 4. “If we fail, the newspaper and its voice will die. All the more energetic will be our efforts in the coming weeks to ensure that the conversation we’ve begun these past few years will continue.” But with the stock and credit markets being what they are, no more money to back the paper could be found. — Amy Wicks