There goes the neighborhood. Rupert Murdoch is planning to move his Wall Street Journal newsroom from the financial district where it's lived for over 100 years to News Corp's headquarters on Sixth Avenue. The Midtown Journal just doesn't have quite the same ring, though. We predict singing rumble sequences in the cafeteria between WSJ staffers and their new Fox and New York Post siblings. Manhattan's newspapers have either died or migrated uptown over the century, choking the neighborhood around Rockefeller Center, but the Journal was a holdout of a bygone era. After the jump, a stroll around New York's former press nucleus.

Trendwatch: The AP's decision to draw up an advance obituary for 26 year old Britney Spears is being replicated for many other young, at-risk stars. The AP got caught without pre-written death stories for Anna Nicole Smith and the recently deceased Brad Renfro, but now the wire service is preparing canned obits for a bunch of 20-somethings. But why bother? After the jump, New York Sun obit guru Stephen Miller says that the AP should just calm down:

Not everybody has a benevolent billionaire looking out for them like we do here in the big, bad City - at least not yet. But with Hillary and John inching their way toward the inevitable, Mike Bloomberg says, "Hey, America. I've got your back." Mike's been toying with the press for months with his (kind of annoying and ultimately doomed) non-campaign for president, and yesterday he took his first little baby-step beyond City Hall into the great wilderness that lies west of the Hudson. All the way west. To California, specifically. Flanked by Arnie and a guy who's governor of Pennsylvania, Mike gave a speech demanding "independent, non-partisan" solutions to the problems facing the country's roads and bridges and things. Not really the sexiest issues to base a presidential bid around, but it's probably good to stick with what you know. [New York Sun]

When Rupert Murdoch goes a-poaching to staff his Wall Street Journal newsroom, the New York Times won't be the first place he'll look, if you take at face value (not advisable) comments he made yesterday during an interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto. "There are some very fine journalists there we would be happy to have, but, I mean, equally there are in other newspapers." Shut up, no way.

What's this? Manhattan's private schools are dispensing with the legacy advantage? No longer will younger siblings be assured admission into Dalton, Spence or Collegiate by surfing the coattails of their older (smarter!) enrolled brothers and sisters? Cripes! At Columbia Grammar, so many siblings of current students have applied this year, that few—wait for it—"outside" boys will be accepted. "I'm not going to say a number, because I don't want to set off any more panic out there than there already is," the admissions director there told the New York Sun. "It's not a joke anymore," a private admissions advisor told the paper. "If you have a sibling, you'd be crazy not to apply to a number of schools. You'd be nuts not to do that." Other ways to know you're out of your tree? You find yourself using terms generally used to describe plagues, disasters and other mass calamities during an interview with a reporter about kindergarten.

"The first of 20 planned automatic public toilets across the five boroughs is expected to open this week in Madison Square Park, after construction and testing is completed," according to The New York Sun. The toilets will cost a quarter to use and the doors will automatically open after 15 minutes. Well, why not? We can't have the poor and possibly constipated using our fancy loos. They're reserved for blowing bumps and strangers— both of which can be easily done in under 15 minutes! [NYSun]

The New York Post is all a-flutter today over how Brooke Astor's daughter-in-law, Charlene Marshall, "burst into laughter" when a Post photographer introduced himself to her yesterday, because of their funny "Bad Heir Day" cover. "We're A Hit With Mrs.," is the story's headline. We're surprised they went that far to promote themselves, since Mrs. Marshall is carrying yesterday's New York Sun in the accompanying photograph. (And on top of that she is carrying what looks like her husband's indictment, which strikes us as a bit callous, considering how hard she's hee-hawing away, but who's really keeping track?)

Lee Bollinger—president of Columbia University and friend to the Bush administration? We were not aware such an oxymoronic existence was possible, but it seems Bollinger's little performance during the recent visit to the school of a certain Iranian dictator has his faculty all atwitter.

Longtime (relatively speaking) New York Sun staff reporter Jill Gardiner, who covered City Hall for the paper for the last three years, is heading to New York real estate news magazine The Real Deal.

Last week, Josh Gerstein explained how the information control freaks at the National Security Agency conducted secret "seminars" for reporters—basically, little classes on how and when the government would like them to keep their mouths shut about top-secret and not-so-secret information. What's funny is that no one seems to remember the sessions, which went down at NSA headquarters between 2002 and 2004. Maureen Baginski, who was listed as a presenter at the seminars, said she had no recollection of being present. Why would she? She was only the FBI's "intelligence czar" back in 2004, before she left to work for SPARTA, an employee-owned defense contractor of utmost secret-government-like creepiness. Likewise? Not a single reporter has yet come forward to claim attendance.

The Observer gets a look at the New York Sun's style guide, and notes that "it can be taken to offer some insight into the editorial positioning of the" rabidly pro-Zionist paper. Some revealing entries include admonishments against referring to the "occupied territories" ("West Bank and Gaza Strip" are acceptable, as is simply "territories") and the "peace process," which should only be used when quoted by someone else. And when it comes to Israeli Prime Ministers, "our readers can be counted on to know of which country Prime Minister Sharon heads the government. Likewise with the American president." But perhaps our favorite entry concerns the use of the word "ethnic," which "Means not Jewish or Christian." Awww, adorable! The Sun wants you to think the Jews are just as good as white people!

New York Post media columnist Keith Kelly called the New York Sun "unwanted and unread" last year, but apparently his bosses don't agree. The Post extended offers within the last two weeks to four top Sun editors and at least one reporter. Sun flack Michael Moi confirmed that all five turned down the tabloid, which boasts a mostly-paid daily circulation of more than 720,000, in favor of the Sun, whose combined circulation was 106,000 in June, according to the Certified Audit of Circulations. "We're flattered that the Post is interested in our talented staff," Moi told us. "We're even more flattered and honored that each of them chose to remain a part of the New York Sun family." When even daily exposure to Ira Stoll's neoconiacal (Not a word! But so fitting!) cackle isn't enough to bring people over to your side, you know you've got a serious recruiting issue.

Each morning we wake up, open the front door, grab the newspaper, look at the forecast for the day's high temperature, and dress based on that forecast. (Occasionally we also shower.) And every day, around noon, we find ourselves complaining that we're too hot because the paper was completely wrong. So we asked Intern Mary to track the weekday results of the city's three major papers and the New York Sun against the actual high temperatures over a two-week period. She also looked at the online predictions, for those of you who get your news that way. Her findings may surprise you!

This morning, I received a letter at my apartment in Brooklyn. It was from the New York Sun, and they were offering me a free one-year subscription to the "most critically acclaimed newspaper to debut in the city in a generation." (Had they not heard what I think of their editorial product?) It made sense, though, given that the paper recently raised its newsstand price. Because, seriously, is anyone paying for this paper? Click to enlarge!

The New York Sun is a decidedly neoconservative paper, known for its rabid defense of Israel and its advocacy of lower taxes. But sometimes you can get lulled by its Metro coverage, or its decent, if staid, arts coverage. Today, though, managing editor Ira Stoll reviews lead neocon Norman Podhoretz's new book World War IV, and Stoll's perspective should put any illusions about the paper's true colors to rest. In Stoll's mind, the war in Iraq is about overthrowing a fascist regime—nothing more, nothing less—and the echoes of the U.S.'s too-late involvement in World War II are very loud. And by that logic, President Bush should be hailed as a hero, not a warmonger, the thousands of Iraqi civilian and U.S. soldier deaths be damned.

Sun columnist Alicia Colon: "Most Hollywood films are sympathetic to the plight of women and teenagers caught in unwanted pregnancies. The abortion providers are saintly figures such as Michael Caine in "The Cider House Rules," for which he won an Academy Award in 1999. When a film comes along that might stir some misgiving about the loss of values in our society it's met with resistance..." Yeah, everyone remembers how they buried Knocked Up, right? [NYS]

Headline on the front page of today's New York Sun: "U.S. Success in Iraq War Could Hurt Democrats." Yes! So true! But they mean that in the same, odd misapplication-of-the-conditional way that could also be, like: "Thousands Of Roaming Mutant Monkey-Kitten Hybrids Could Complicate Traffic." Ooh, I would so like to read a daily newspaper devoted to covering a highly improbable and confusing speculative future. In it I will learn right now about fun problems that will never come to pass!

Now that the Journal and the Times have jacked up their newsstand price, the Sun wants to get into the action. That's right, New York's other "high-quality broadsheet" is raising their newsstand price to $1. Still, odds are high that you'll still find yourself getting free, unsolicited copies on your doorstep every morning, so it probably won't affect you all that much.

We have a half-developed theory that the Catholic Church's rejection of the Latin Mass in the wake of Vatican II - which instructed priests to perform the ceremony in the language of its parishioners and face the congregation, as opposed to previous practice - was a reaction to the aggressive bebop stylings of the late fifties and early sixties, where the players turned their back on the crowds and performed music that was more difficult to understand. Like a lot of the crap we spout off about, the whole idea is sort of ridiculous and without merit, but, whatever, it's not like we're shouting it out in a major metropolitan daily or anything. Because that would make us, you know, Alicia Colon.

New York Sun publisher Seth Lipsky apparently took some time away from his busy schedule of accusing everyone of anti-Semitism to demand that all male interns attend work in a suit and tie. Aww, it's 1940 in his mind!