Breaking: Red Streak Struck

By Aaron Bailey in News on Dec 20, 2005 4:31PM

Last week Chicagoist wrote: "Memo to John Cruickshank: Time to fold the Red Streak. This is getting embarrassing."

On Thursday, the "youth-focused" Red Streak will publish its last issue, three years after its first. While we'd like to think we had something to do with the closing, we know the Red Streak's fate was sealed long ago.

Crain's is reporting that no jobs will be lost as a result of the closure, probably because most staffers have already been laid off months ago.

Red Eye staffers must be partying today. A statement from general manager Brad Moore said, "RedEye has established itself with socially active, time-pressed Chicagoans. In three short years, we've amassed a weekly readership of nearly 600,000 and attracted over 1,400 advertisers to our pages." In other words, nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah, suckers!

So what's next for the Sun-Times? Chicagoist recommends putting some of those resources into beefing up their website. Keep publishing the chicagoredstreak.com, in online/weblog form. Turn to citizen journalism to gather content from around Chicago. Take the opportunity to grab eyeballs while us "youth" are at work, surfing away. If Mr. Cruickshank is reading this, we'd be happy to help you out.

In fact, a new website, the Chicago Daily News, is trying to establish itself as an alternative to the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune by using citizen journalism, a concept which "hasn't fully proved out in many places," according to a Tribune article. Try telling that to the tens of thousands of daily readers of Chicago sites like Gapers Block and the one you are reading now.

All of this still makes us think that the Tribune and Sun-Times are still having a hard time figuring out us "youth." The future is in the Chicagoists and Gawkers and Wikipedias of the web, not in dead trees.