Every morning (now even on weekends) I have something to look forward to on my long commute to work. As I stand sandwiched in a sardine tin (Red Line train) I realize I am not alone in this. Everything I need to know for the day is in black and white copy in a neatly pressed magazine paper. Yes, the Chicago RedEye http://redeye.chicagotribune.com/ is my saving grace and guilty pleasure.
Because of my personal informant, world news, local news, suduko, music listings, horoscopes, celebrity gossip, CTA complaints, restaurant reviews and freebies are mine all before 8am. I have a heads up on every current event without watching the news (although it’s usually in addition to BBC and E! News).
The RedEye does not discriminate. Unlike other elitist competitors, this freebie appeals to the masses of women and men in their twenties and thirties. It beckons from a shiny red box conveniently located outside of every train station. If you manage to miss one of the hundreds of boxes littered throughout the city you are sure to meet a paper wielder wanting to put the news in your hands when leaving and entering the station.
I couldn’t have produced a better paper if I had written it myself. It appeals to people in my income bracket (it’s free), it has daily food and beverage deals, it has games, love advice (gay and straight), fashion advice for men and women and is somewhat left leaning (ok maybe very leftist with all the Bush idioms) in political focus.
The producers of this paper know their market. The articles are short and sweet and get right to the point. No one has the time or the attention span to read pages and pages of nonsense. We want to get straight to the point with short blurbs that introduce the audience to the news of the world. It doesn’t go into thorough detail about world news, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a morning recap of what’s happening now.
The ads in the RedEye know me well too. Ads with beer specials and game nights abound making my weekly calendar a breeze to plan. If I want to know when Brody Jenner is coming to Enclave there it is in bold captions easy to find. If I need to know when tryouts are for Coyote Ugly the RedEye will tell me where to be.
In terms of the Chicago Red Eye, I think ‘Big Media’ knows me well enough. The paper offers a range of stories, advice and ideas and it’s up to me the audience to decide what to take and what to leave. By making the paper so accessible my peers are apt to be in the know just as much as I am. The news should be free and this is paper I can relate to.
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Like the RedEye, this is a light and pleasant read . . . . But what doesn't/can't/won't the RedEye do, that maybe contemporary readers really need? "No one has the time or the attention span to read pages and pages of nonsense"--but is the only alternative to RedEye's reduction of complex world events to annotated maps and bullet points "nonsense?" I'd be interested to hear what you'd say to someone (and there are plenty of such someones, even ones like me who read the RedEye -anyway-) who are concerned that the RedEye represents a dumbing-down of the news that assumes its readers can't handle the truth if the truth lasts much more than the length of an exceptionally verbose Tweet.
ReplyDelete-A- Link is a start, but if you engaged a little more with the debate about this paper and its ilk, you might have more to link to, maybe?