This post was published in the Wilson Times Oct. 26,
2019
At our daughter’s urging, my
wife and I took a recent trip to Chicago, which neither of us had ever seen. We
planned to see the sights and major attractions, the Lake Michigan waterfront,
the “Magnificent Mile” of tall buildings, the parks, the Art Institute, Picasso’s
massive untitled steel sculpture and more.
We had anticipated all those
things; they were in our plans. What we didn’t expect was an artifact from the
desperate attempts of a once-powerful and wealthy newspaper corporation in a
great, even legendary, newspaper town to keep people reading their news in
print.
I didn’t recognize at first
the odd-looking metal box about three feet high with a big round red metal ball
on top. Then I remembered reading about the RedEye, a tabloid publication that
the Chicago Tribune launched in 2002 in the hope of luring 18- to 34-year-olds
back to print media. RedEye was free at first and published daily. Initially,
distribution agents just handed out the papers as commuters boarded or exited
trains. The smaller tabloid format was thought to be “commuter friendly,”
meaning it could be read by holding the RedEye with one hand while holding onto
a pole or strap in the train with the other hand.
Readership of print
newspapers was plummeting, and advertising was migrating to the Internet in the
1990s. From the late 1980s through the Great Recession, newspaper publishers
scrambled to find a way to stop the bleeding. Many thousands of newspaper jobs
were eliminated. Advertising-starved papers shrank in size, and all kinds of
creative ideas, such as RedEye, were proposed by news executives and
consultants. None of those ideas saved the industry. Aggregators such as Google
and Facebook pile up billions in cash revenues while once-strong newspapers,
which created the news aggregators sell, are forced to close.
Despite great promotional
campaigns from a company with more than 150 years in the newspaper business
(The Tribune started publication in 1847 and survived the Great Chicago Fire of
1871, then helped lead the city’s recovery and reconstruction), RedEye
ultimately failed to bring younger readers and commuters back to ink-on-paper
news. After giving away copies of RedEye for six months, the Tribune began
charging 25 cents per copy. The decrepit newspaper boxes with the big red ball
on top that I saw show that RedEye just couldn’t make it. In 2017, RedEye
switched to a weekly production schedule.
Tribune Media, once a
dominant news and content provider in newspapers, radio and television, went
through a series of mergers, spinoffs, and other attempts to stay solvent
before succumbing to bankruptcy in 2008.
The old RedEye boxes were
not the only artifacts of a once-thriving industry. The grandiose Tribune Tower
on Michigan Avenue is another artifact of a bygone era, from the same company
that attempted a turnaround with red news boxes, splashy promotions and big red
orbs atop their news boxes. The 1925 Gothic Revival Tribune Tower was the
result of an international competition to design the greatest skyscraper ever. The
elegantly chiseled stone building that once housed the Tribune empire was a
cathedral to news. Now, the 36-story building is being converted to apartments
and retail space. It still looks impressive, and I’m sure the apartments are
very pricey. It, too, is a reminder of how far the newspaper industry has
fallen in half a century.
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