• by Dana Blankenhorn , April 6, 2003

Chicago's newspaper competition is getting a little hotter.

The Chicago Tribune will launch home deliveries of its RedEye edition starting next Monday.

The RedEye, a tabloid designed for younger, intown readers, many of whom now read the rival Chicago Sun-Times, was launched last October and now claims 100,000 readers, against 700,000 for the regular Tribune, said spokeswoman Patty Wetli.

The paper has drawn ads from 120 advertisers, Wetli claimed, many of them bars, clubs and restaurants who couldn't afford the Tribune, and on whom suburban or downstate circulation was wasted. "That's too much for the buyers to bite off," she said.

Much of the content against which those ads run is from Metromix.com, a Tribune Web site geared to entertainment.

RedEye deliveries will be done alongside the Tribune, except only within its intown and inner-suburb distribution area, Wetli said. It should hit doorsteps around 6:30 AM.

"You get RedEye for $1/week, and you can add the Sunday Tribune for another $1." RedEye costs 25 cents per day on the newsstand.

RedEye's delivery of news differs markedly from the Tribune, Wetli said. For instance, a story last Monday on the closing of Meigs Field in downtown Chicago called Mayor Richard M. Daily "X Man," for the Xs he had bulldozed into the field to keep planes from landing.

RedEye is also conducting daily surveys from over 800 readers each day. "We get overnight feedback on things like the cover. This makes us more responsive," Wetli said.

"We think the Trib and RedEye are two different audiences," she added. "What we saw with RedEye is we captured a lot of folks who aren't reading newspapers, period.

It's the RedEye demographic target that may be the most interesting twist to this story for the ad buyer. Instead of aiming for the entire market, or for the Sun-Times market, RedEye is targeted more like an alternative newspaper or magazine.

"Based on the survey we're hitting the target, young, urban 18-34, commuters who live in the city," Wetli concluded.