As the alternative newsweekly industry matures, competition from dailies and other media for the desirable 18-to-34 reader intensifies, E&P's Lucia Moses reports in this week's cover story. Despite the burgeoning youth-oriented offerings from daily media empires, "it may not be all that dire for alt-weeklies," she concludes. "They are a long way from being confused with dailies. They still write with more opinion and attitude, and take more risks."
"Does the U.S. Department of Justice really have so little to do it must investigate why a couple of alternatives were folded?" E&P asks in a Nov. 25 editorial. With so many media outlets in both the Los Angeles and Cleveland markets where the two alternative weekly chains closed papers to end head-to-head competition, advertisers have plenty of places to go. "It's not an argument Justice can make with a straight face," E&P concludes.
Charles Whitaker, director of the Academy for Alternative Journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, says the Chicago dailies' two new youth-oriented weekday tabs "are neither hip, nor smart, nor in any way sophisticated." Whitaker, a former editor of Ebony, says he'd hoped the Tribune and the Sun Times would have used their considerable resources to achieve "a radical rethinking of what newspapers are and what they can be. ... Boy, was I wrong."
RedEye and Red Streak both "suck to similar degrees, and both emulate the clichés of youth-oriented marketing: brevity, snark, 'edginess' ... and color," Whet Moser of The Chicago Maroon writes. But their other, more important, failures include not being a substitute for the "brevity and depth" of the Internet or either a viable substitute for or a precursor to reading the regular daily, the University of Chicago columnist writes.
Chicago's new weekday tabloids RedEye and Red Streak are pulling the same display advertisers as AAN members Chicago Reader and Chicago Newcity, Jeremy Mullman reports in Crain's Chicago Business. "This will have some short-term impact on the Reader," newspaper consultant Scott Stawski tells Mullman. "I believe it'll put Newcity out."
Chicago Media Examiner spoofs the Chicago Tribune's new "alternative" weekday tabloid, RedEye. Chicago Red Face has a cool Top Ten Reasons to Read This Web Site list, a whining sports column, lots of blocks of type and pix and a paean to its readers: "You, dear reader, rule the Earth!!! You are most definitely the most coolest person ever ... We love you. We want to perform oral homage on you. We just can't put into words how amazingly incredible you are and how honored we are by your existence. Keep up the good work! "
"The RedEye will be the newspaper equivalent of the middle-aged bald guy with a ponytail," Richard Karpel, executive director of AAN, tells Shirley Leung, a Wall Street Journal reporter. Leung looks at the precipitous flight of younger readers from daily newspapers and the checkered history of their attempts to recapture them. Chicago Reader Editor Alison True questions the entire strategy of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, which both launched youth-oriented weekday tabloids this week, RedEye and Red Streak, respectively. "Younger readers don't pick up a daily, so let's give them a daily?" True asks.
The Chicago Sun Times' new youth-oriented tabloid Red Streak hit the streets today opposite the Chicago Tribune's RedEye. "Both papers featured slick designs and a paucity of original content," Jeremy Mullman writes in Crain's Chicago Business. Both tabloids launched Web sites today as well.
Noise, Gannett's new "alternative" in Lansing, Mich., and the Chicago Tribune's RedEye both debuted last week, Mark Fitzgerald reports in Editor & Publisher. The Chicago Sun-Times answer to RedEye is due to launch on Wednesday, he reports.
The Chicago Tribune's new youth-oriented tabloid hits the streets today, five days early. The Trib pushed up the start date to get out of the gate before rival Chicago Sun-Times' version of an "alternative," Trib media writer Jim Kirk reports. The Sun-Times tab will be called Red Streak, Kirk says.
