Northwestern woke up Monday to a world of global terrorism, gay marriage bans and the impending trial of Saddam Hussein. The only way to avoid hearing about this was, well, to pick up a newspaper.
That’s because the most available daily paper at NU — besides The Daily — is the Chicago Tribune’s tabloid edition, RedEye. It was launched in 2002 to reach hip, young readers by “talking to the up-and-coming in the language of the up-and-coming.” Lo and behold, free issues of RedEye are splayed over campus at every spot we stop to eat or loiter.
RedEye was created in response to studies by organizations including NU’s own Media Management Center, which found young people weren’t reading newspapers. The Tribune’s solution was to trim the size of stories, add lots of pictures and run three pages of celebrity gossip. In real life this meant Monday’s RedEye cover was a story about plastic surgery and reality TV called “Extreme Fakeover.” Condoleezza Rice made page four.
According to co-editor Jane Hirt, the paper keeps it short and sensational because the audience “is time-pressed.” Patty Wetli, the Tribune’s communications manager, said “people are interested in getting news in condensed form.”
RedEye includes most of the day’s major stories in miniature form. But the average Wildcat was the sixth-grader who kicked aside the books at his reading level to pick up “The Bonfire of the Vanities.”
Most students I’ve talked to would change RedEye if they could. Communication sophomore Stephanie Miller said she preferred USA Today because “the worldly articles are better, and I like the writing better.” Other students said RedEye’s approach was insulting.
“This is pop news,” said James Smith, a Weinberg and Music junior. “It’s not highbrow — it’s entertaining.”
The brains behind RedEye are actually proud of their pop news. According to Wetli, the paper’s audience is “really interested in pop culture and gossip.” But NU students are also really interested in The Onion and The Daily Show. Half the fun of those brands of fake news comes from their mockery of the starstruck, lame reporting that plagues newspapers, local TV news and cable talk shows.
When the Super Bowl halftime show pushed real news off the map for a whole week, Jon Stewart ripped the coverage, saying “the tip of the news media’s tongue has been glued to Janet Jackson’s right breast.”
That was the week RedEye ran three consecutive cover stories on Janet Jackson.
Does it matter that this friendly youth-centric paper is out of touch with NU? Medill senior and former Daily staffer Campbell Roth, who interned for the paper last summer, thinks not.
“It’s definitely the future of journalism,” Roth said. “We’re not our parents. We’re not going to sit and read a traditional paper from front to back.”
Maybe it doesn’t matter that many of us still like to sit down and read the paper. The people who edit them are more than willing to define what we really want.
David Weigel is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
