RedEye, Red Streak go nose-to-nose
Flash and sass as papers court the MTV crowd
October 31, 2002 | By Jim Kirk and H. Gregory Meyer, Tribune staff reporters.
Nosheen Rathore read the back page of the new Red Streak tabloid and liked the entertainment news and gossip.
“I thought it was interesting–the one about Courtney Love’s breast implants,” the 19-year-old DePaul University student said.
Her friend, Ashmar Mandou, 19, picked up the rival RedEye and found it more to her liking.
“I kept this because of the weather and the thing about Oprah,” she said.
Welcome to Chicago’s new newspaper war, where victory is measured in the number of 18- to 34-year-old readers won, and the weapons are heavy doses of celebrity, sex, sports and sass.
The war officially got under way Wednesday when the city’s two big newspapers launched flashy tabloid editions aimed at the MTV crowd.
The Chicago Tribune offered RedEye, a 60-page tabloid that had unofficially debuted Friday after months of preparation. The Sun-Times countered with Red Streak, a 40-page offering that staffers created in three weeks after learning of the Tribune’s plans.
But while the readership target was a new one, some of the early circulation shenanigans and marketing gimmicks looked a lot like the city’s storied newspaper battles of old.
Meanwhile, the newspaper industry, desperate to find new readers, is watching carefully to see if the experiment playing out in Chicago will work.
Ultimately, how long both papers will give themselves to break even, or perhaps even show a profit, will depend on how well advertisers respond to the two Monday-Friday papers aimed at a prime audience.
“I think the success of these efforts is more important to the newspaper industry than to the advertising industry,” said Karen Jacobs, senior vice president at giant media buyer Starcom MediaVest Group in Chicago. “It’s a gutsy move and a cool idea. Clearly newspaper readership continues to go down in this demographic.
“There are certain advertisers who are no-brainers. What I don’t know is whether Chicago can support two of these.”
The way the Tribune and Sun-Times went at it Wednesday, it appeared that both papers also recognize the stakes are high.
The Sun-Times printed 125,000 Red Streaks, while 130,000 RedEyes rolled off the Tribune’s presses. Both papers will sell for 25 cents. Staffers from both papers aggressively gave away copies Wednesday, with key locations being “L” stations, downtown and neighborhoods where young people live and congregate.
Heated competition
The hard sell created some hard feelings.
For example, RedEye staffers pointed a finger at Red Streak representatives, saying they piled their papers into the Tribune’s red
Meanwhile, RedEye and Red Streak employees, within feet of each other, handed copies to anyone who would take them on North Michigan Avenue.
Much of the Sun-Times’ circulation base comes from single-copy sales. Not surprisingly, editors of the paper, owned by Hollinger International Inc., see a threat from a tabloid sold by the deep-pocketed Tribune Co.
“There’s a stranger in the house,” said John Cruickshank, vice president of editorial at the Sun-Times. “We haven’t had a year of planning. We’ve had three weeks to try to respond.”
Some of the Sun-Times tactics appear to be attempts to spoil the Tribune’s plans. Everything from the name of its edition to some promotional materials appears to be lifted from the Tribune’s business plan.
Cruickshank said the Sun-Times was in the fight for the long haul, promising to publish the Red Streak as long as the Tribune published RedEye.
Tribune executives said their goal isn’t to steal readers from the Sun-Times.
“They continue to think it’s all about them,” said John O’Loughlin, general manager of RedEye. “We have a huge opportunity in a particular demographic.”
Chicago’s battle of the reds comes as traditional newspapers face an eye-opening problem: a disturbing and growing trend among 18- to 34-year-olds who turn to the Internet and other sources for news.
Daily readership down
According to the Newspaper Association of America, the number of 20- to 29-year-olds who read a newspaper daily has dropped to nearly 20 percent from nearly 50 percent in the early 1970s. It is for that reason that the Tribune, nearly a year ago, began researching possible ways to capture young eyeballs.
To produce RedEye, the Tribune is using a mix of new staffers and Chicago Tribune employees, including Tribune sports columnist Steve Rosenbloom.
Red Streak pulled several staffers from the Sun-Times’ sister newspapers in the suburbs. But it also is borrowing heavily from the mothership, including running Sun-Times sports columnist Jay Mariotti’s column.
Mariotti, who like other staffers at the paper is a member of the Chicago Newspaper Guild, said he didn’t mind showing up in both papers.
“My understanding is that they own the words,” Mariotti said, referring to Hollinger. “I’m glad I’m deemed hip in my old age.”
But the union may not be as nonchalant. Bob Mutter, co-chairman of the Sun-Times unit of the guild, said the unit plans to file a grievance over the paper’s use of non-union staffers.