By Mike Miner
Everyone pitches in at the Sun-Times. Take Deborah Douglas. Her voice mail identifies her as deputy features editor and director of the library. But I was calling to discuss Red Streak, and when I reached her she assumed I had questions about Fluff. She’s in charge of both these helium-filled products. She wears hat after hat.
“Fluff is fluffier than the previous fluff,” she said helpfully.
Feigning interest in her new section, the Sun-Times’s latest bid to find readers for its failing Sunday paper, I’d asked what distinguishes the fluff that already stuffed every stray crevice of the Sun-Times from Fluff-worthy fluff.
“I guess I just haven’t codified a philosophy of Fluff,” she said. “If it’s fun and goes down easy, then I run with it.”
What if it catches a little on the way down? I asked. What if, like pistachio ice cream, it’s a little bit chewy?
“Fluff is uncomplicated,” she declared. “It’s like cotton candy. It won’t get stuck in your braces.”
Do most of your readers wear braces?
“No, they’re not that young,” she replied. “But twentysomethings I’ve talked about it with say they love having Fluff. You don’t have to pay $5 for your fluff magazine because they have it in their Sunday paper. Hopefully we’re going to pull in some new readers. It’s a fun thing. It’s postmodern. It’s ironic. It’s a joke, and we’re in on it. We’re all having a good laugh.”
She did point out that the Sunday paper isn’t all fun and games. When the Sun-Times added Fluff five weeks ago it also added Controversy, a growly new commentary section (with an impressively expanded books department). “And you know ‘Scurrilous’ has been immensely successful, and ‘Scurrilous’ lives in Fluff.”
It’s not in the daily paper any longer? (I’d been caught napping.)
“‘Scurrilous’ lives in Fluff.”
But I’d called about Red Streak. I was thinking Douglas must spend ten minutes a day tops on that paper.
“Red Streak is status quo,” she said. “We’re publishing it five days a week, and we’re going to do that forever.”
I wasn’t so sure. Weeks ago, when the Sun-Times decided to give away Red Streak, I noticed something. The Tribune’s competing RedEye was being handed out free to commuters at CTA stations, but most RedEye boxes on street corners still required a quarter. At the end of the day those boxes were full, yet the adjacent Red Streak boxes, with big free stickers plastered on them, were empty. It seemed clear that the brand loyalty RedEye worked so hard to cultivate didn’t exist. Its readers seemed to have switched to Red Streak the minute they didn’t have to pay for it.
Then I noticed something else. The Red Streak boxes that were empty at the end of the day were also empty at the beginning. (The crumpled-up paper at the bottom of one box near my house is dated March 9.) Making the Red Streak boxes free to open was a splendid gesture diminished by the failure to put anything in them.
This made me wonder if Red Streak still existed. The Sun-Times admitted from the get-go that the only reason Red Streak was launched was to stir up confusion in the marketplace. Perhaps the Sun-Times had figured out that empty Red Streak boxes could do that by themselves. The big free stickers said loud and clear to anyone tempted to pay a quarter for the competition, “Don’t be a schmuck!”
And if RedEye retaliated and marked all its boxes free, the Red Streak boxes could switch to 25 cent rebate on each paper. This was the kind of circulation war Red Streak couldn’t lose, since it wouldn’t actually have any.
Douglas seemed intrigued by the possibilities. But she informed me that Red Streak was really and truly still a daily newspaper. She said, “I see it every day when I walk in front of the Apparel Center”–which is where the Sun-Times now has its offices. It’s a matter of knowing where to look.