Bloggers Offer Sarcastic Thanks to Chicago's 'RedEye'

By: Mark Fitzgerald Andrew Nelson can't remember now which RedEye clarification it was that set him off as he rode on a Chicago transit train with his fiancee last summer.

What he does know is that it was yet another gaffe in a series that he thought insulted his and his peers' intelligence in the target demographic of the Chicago Tribune's youth-oriented tabloid.

"I was like, who doesn't know this?" recalls Nelson, a senior at the Medill journalism school. "So she said, 'Why don't you keep a list of stupid clarifications?' And that sounded like it'd be a blog."

So RedEye, designed for the Millennials and Gen-Xers who love to blog, is itself the sole subject of a blog by a small group of current and former journalism students at Northwestern University who needle, mock, chastise, and very occasionally praise the free daily.

"Thanks, RedEye!" (http://thanksredeye.blogspot.com) offers a mission statement of sorts that complains the paper "offers a promising format, but mostly just gives us the best of the obvious: clarifications only cretins need, cover stories we'd stopped caring about long before press time, disastrously self- important display type."

Talking in the Golden Olympic diner a couple of blocks from Northwestern's Evanston, Ill., campus, Nelson and recent Medill graduate Scott Gordon, both 21, say they feel continually patronized by RedEye's content. "It wouldn't bother me having all of this US Weekly stuff if they had some real hard news, too," Gordon says. The tab, Nelson says, doesn't engage its audience in a public discussion as newspapers should: "They really only treat young people like consumers. Well, occasionally, we are something more."

The four regular bloggers featured on "Thanks, RedEye!" are very specific with their criticism. "It helps that Andrew and I are kind of nitpicky people," Gordon says, while insisting their critiques, while biting, are intended to be constructive.

They don't pretend, though, that they're getting through at RedEye. Co-Editor Jane Hirt hadn't even heard of the blog until E&P asked her about it, and says it doesn't reflect what the paper hears from readers and its audience research: "We know RedEye isn't for everyone, and that those interested in more traditional newspapering might take issue with some of our decisions.

"We're not really aiming for newshounds who devour newspapers all day," she adds. "We're winning over lighter newspaper readers who might not have been reading any newspaper, for whatever reason." RedEye's conversational style and editorial mix reflect the target audience, Hirt adds: "That's not patronizing. That's a newspaper's job."

Target demographic Nelson, though, says he's not buying it: "Under any definition of RedEye's mission, it's failing, whether it's trying to be a junior Tribune ... or it's trying to be hip."