Ten months after the closure of his marquee Sunday paper, the News of the World, Rupert Murdoch has done exactly what many people predicted he would do, and created a replacement Sunday paper, under the name of the Sun. The launch, on February 6th, of the Sun on Sunday, announced only a week before it happened, was stealthy but intensely hyped. “Four days ’til SUNday,” a subway poster read. “In Britain the Sun comes out every day.” On the Sun’s Web site, the company heralded its arrival in tones perhaps more suited to a New Age cult: “Rupert Murdoch announced last week that the Sun on Sunday would be coming ‘very soon.’ Now that momentous new dawn is here.”

Murdoch was in London for launch, riding around in cabs wearing a black fedora and trawling his newsrooms at Wapping with his jacket off. He even travelled to Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, to watch the papers roll off the presses. The Sun on Sunday arrives at a particularly fraught moment for Murdoch’s empire. The Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice, and ethics of the press continues, with new damning information emerging nearly every day. Yesterday, Sue Akers, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who is leading Operation Elveden, an investigation of police bribery, testified that the Sun had cultivated a “network of corrupted officials” and “a culture of illegal payments,” with a Sun journalist funnelling a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in cash over several years to sources, “a number of whom were public officials.” An e-mail emerged showing that Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks knew about phone hacking in 2006, demolishing further their oft-repeated defense that the hacking was the work of a “rogue reporter.” Meanwhile, News International agreed to pay six hundred thousand pounds to the Welsh singer Charlotte Church. (“In my opinion, they are not truly sorry—only sorry they have got caught,” Church said.) And today we learn that, in 2008, the Metropolitan Police lent Rebekah Brooks a horse.

On February 11th, five senior journalists from the Sun were arrested on suspicion of bribing police and public officials. Making matters worse for Murdoch, Trevor Kavanagh, a veteran Sun writer, published an indignant column, in which he condemned “witch-hunts” against journalists and insinuated that the higher-ups of News Corp’s management had sold out their reporters to protect themselves. “The Sun is not a swamp that needs to be draining,” he wrote. “Some of the greatest legends in Fleet Street have been held, at least on the basis of evidence so far revealed, for simply doing their jobs as journalists on behalf of the company.” Against this mutinous backdrop, the birth of the Sun on Sunday seemed a somewhat desperate effort, like having a baby in an attempt to save a sinking marriage.

But the first issue of the paper sold well—three and a quarter million copies, according to Murdoch’s Twitter feed, at fifty pence apiece. (The Guardian has more figures on the audience, and on how the Sun on Sunday fared against its competitors.) I’d love to give you an EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT! of what was in it, but I couldn’t find a copy, even after casing four newsstands and three supermarkets and calling around to all the cafés in the neighborhood. But sources report that the paper was ninety-two pages long. The cover trumpeted an exclusive interview with Amanda Holden, a British television personality who recently underwent a difficult childbirth, during which, the headline proclaimed, “MY HEART STOPPED FOR 40 SECONDS.” Heston Blumenthal (chef), Nancy Dell’Olio (socialite and former dater of Sven-Göran Eriksson, who was then the manager of the England soccer team), and Katie Price (a.k.a. Jordan, a “glamour model” whose significance to the national culture it would take another ninety-two pages to explain) débuted as columnists. There was a picture of David Beckham cuddling Harper, his new baby; an interview with a war widow; and a mildly topless picture of Kelly Rowland. The BBC’s verdict: “an upbeat family paper with no sleaze, no kiss’n’tells.” Even if the Sun comes out every day, it isn’t always sizzling.

Photograph by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images.