Trib Hikes Newsstand Price, Boosts Red Eye Circulation

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Jan 5, 2010 5:20PM

Keep those extra quarters handy if you're a fan of the Tribune. The newsstand price of the Monday through Saturday edition of the paper will increase from $0.75 to $1 starting January 18th, the paper announced yesterday. The Sunday edition will remain $1.99 and the price increase won't affect home subscribers. The Chicago Tribune Media Group's president, publisher and chief executive, Tony Hunter, said via a statement, "While this pricing action will improve our financial results, the increase is consistent with pricing trends across the industry."

Meanwhile, the Tribune started it's bump in production of two free papers. The Spanish-language Hoy has seen its Monday to Thursday circulation bumped to 75,000. At the same time, the popular commuter paper Red Eye has had its distribution boosted to 250,000 (for comparison's sake, the Reader has a reported circulation of around 100,000). Based on the latest circulation information available, that number would put the Red Eye at 22nd on the nationwide rankings of daily paid newspaper circulations, ahead of papers in major cities like Atlanta, San Diego, St. Louis, and New Orleans. There's no denying the Red Eye's popularity and it's expanding supplemental online material on the Trib's Chicago Now website has given us some worthwhile reads like the Homicide Map and their CTA coverage. But the boost in circulation comes with the caveat that, besides being free, a portion of those 250,000 Red Eyes end up languishing unread at train stations and Potbelly's locations around the city, making it harder to pinpoint how many of the papers actually get read.

Still, something's gotta be clicking over at the Trib Tower, right? When the company made the announcement a month ago, Kurt Mueller, General Manager of RedEye and Metromix Chicago, said:

"RedEye is a key brand within our content portfolio, reaching Chicagoans that are young and time-pressed. Advertisers realize that RedEye connects them with this audience better than any other player in the market. Reading RedEye is a part of the fabric of the Chicago commute. We're excited to provide more Chicagoans with RedEye and our advertisers the ability to reach a larger portion of the younger, urban demographic."

And that younger demographic is certainly a big target as the circulation expansion includes "30 suburban colleges."