Sun-Times Goes Red Eye?
By Marcus Gilmer in Miscellaneous on Mar 7, 2009 7:00PM
We're not quite sure what to make of the news that the Sun-Times has started putting out a short version you can download and print. Called the "P.M. Edition," you can download it here (it's in PDF format) and print it out and staple it together for the train ride home, we suppose. Each day goes live around 4 p.m. and the 10 page report features things like capsule news, stock updates, pop culture articles, and crossword and sudoku puzzles. Yep, sounds like a poor man's RedEye to us.
We've talked badly about the RedEye before and some of it's deserved: the dumbed down news and some atrocious writing - example: this week's edition of their new Facebook column decided to make an utter joke of the social media site's Terms of Service shitstorm instead of actually addressing in an even quasi-serious way an issue that affects its readers.
That said, as many people such as the Reader's Whet Moser has pointed out, the RedEye is a success story; it is one of the most popular "papers" in Chicago:
I'm serious as a plague about this: the RedEye is the most read paper in Chicago. Numbers whatever: I trust my eyes, which are on public transportation twice a day, and it's everywhere. So it has to be reckoned with. [RedEye editor] Tran Ha should have been on the [Chicago Journalism Town Hall] panel.
So if this is the Sun-Times' attempt to break in on this market, it's not a bad idea: it's free for readers and all you have to do is print it out at your office and staple it together. And for the S-T, it cuts out the most expensive cost in print media: the actual printing and production. And angling for the afternoon isn't bad, since the RedEye is a morning edition. But so much of the RedEye's popularity is not only its brevity but also the ease with which you carry it around. People still like to hold an actual newspaper and read it. We're interested to see if people feel the same about carrying home a stapled packet as they do a tabloid city paper.