Youthful Dreams on Long Island

Publisher Gardner Cowles III is 30.

Editor Cortland Anderson is 31. Managing Editor Richard Tuttle is 32. Most of the editorial staff of Eastern Long Is land's brand-new newspaper, the Suf folk Sun, are in their 20s. Cowles Communications, Inc. decided that a youth ful daily was just what was called for in the Island's fastest-growing area, where the population is expected to double to 2,000,000 by 1980.

When the Sun appeared for the first time last week, its makeup included whole paragraphs of boldface type on many pages, along with a generous sup ply of pictures and color comics. Almost all the national and international news was left to the wire services, and there was the usual liberal-conservative mix of columnists: Howard K. Smith and Robert Spivak, Barry Goldwater and Doris Fleeson. The staffers concentrated on covering such local matters as supermarket boycotts and the pants-suit rage.

The Sun clearly intends to be much more folksy and homespun than its prosperous competitor Newsday, which is based in adjoining Nassau County and serves the entire Island with a thorough blend of both national and local news.

To Editor Anderson, his readers are "a dynamic group of people. They're home owners, they work on their lawns, they watch TV, they have an awful lot of dogs." Apparently he sees them as some how different from other suburbanites, and the paper started in by catering to dog owners with a story on a local dog pound. The reporter turned up a more bizarre personality than he seemed to realize. As he discussed the number of stray dogs he must gas to death, the "dog warden" blurted out: "It's the damned people that I'd like to put in the gas chamber."

In the case of the Sun, youth is fortunately supported by a very generous daddy. Cowles has sunk close to $2,000,000 into the paper and is willing to shell out much more to make it a success. For a month, the Sun will distribute 100,000 free copies a day while it tries to sign up as many subscribers as possible. At month's end, it will start distributing 100,000 copies to another group of potential purchasers. Then it will follow up with a big promotion campaign, including salesmen decked out in green blazers adorned with the paper's emblem--a blazing sun.

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