It was one doozy of a ride on Wall Street yesterday, a real meltdown with the Dow dropping nearly 800 points, and not far away in Lower Manhattan, there was another meltdown of sorts going on as Seth Lipsky walked into the newsroom of the New York Sun to make the announcement, widely anticipated, that the six-year old conservative daily was indeed closing.

The edition reporters and editors were working on would be the last, after nearly seven years.

Just the day before, sources at the paper were denying it was about to fold.

Less than a month ago, Lipsky, the paper's editor and founder, ran a front-page note to readers alerting them to the paper's imminent collapse unless new sources of funding were found by the end of this month.

Yesterday, talking with reporters, Lipsky said efforts to find new backers had not produced the level of funding the paper needed to make it into the black, and none of it was helped by the suddenly precarious state of the U.S. economy.

"It is sad for any newspaper to go out of publication," he said, "and it is particularly sad for one that is as loved as much as all of us here love The New York Sun and the readers we have won in our six-and-a-half years of publication.

"But I want you to know that the decision to close the paper has not been an acrimonious one. It is a logical decision following a hard-headed assessment of our chances of meeting our goal of profitable publication in the near future."

Some 100 workers will lose their jobs, but Lipsky assured the staff they would be paid through November and that their health insurance would run to the end of the year.

In many ways, the hurdles facing the Sun when it launched in 2002 would seem insurmountable.

It aspired to be an alternative to The New York Times, presenting a conservative voice to what Lipsky and his backers, which included Canadian newspaper mogul Conrad Black, considered the Times' leftist bend.

In many ways, the Sun excelled, attracting talented writers and editors, and publishing some fine journalism over the years, especially in its coverage of New York arts and culture.

But it never really drew the mass readership it needed to challenge The Times.

It claimed a circulation of 150,000 but in fact it was half that, and two thirds of its circulation was free. The paper struggled as well to win over advertisers, who already had a number of established publications that reached the Sun's tiny readership.

The paper launched with just $15 million in backing, which led analysts back in 2002 to doubt that it would ever have much impact in the city.