Tuesday, September 20, 2005

 

It was a bad (two) day(s) to be...

...riding Metra and reading RedEye.

RedEye has failed this week to serve its target readers by not running a cover story on this weekend's Metra derailment. A paper that presumes to provide fast news in a conveniently small format should be looking out for the safety of commuters.

Jane Cuthbert, one of the two women killed in the crash Saturday was a 22-year-old UIC student and commuter—demographically an ideal RedEye reader. RedEye vending boxes are outside almost every El or Metra stop I've ever been to. Why aren't RedEye's reporters out there talking to young train riders? Why aren't they questioning Metra and the CTA about their policies on train speed? This is ripe for an investigative report—one that would directly serve the interests of people who are supposed to be spending their quarters on this gaudy rag. If I were riding that train, I'd want to know how often it was speeding at track crossovers—if nothing else so that I could fold my RedEye into a crudely fashioned puke bag or crumple it up into a blood sponge. To serve its market—not just lure, but serve—this paper needs to assert itself with its own specifically focused reporting. A wire story on a Metra crash, in a Chicago publication, is unacceptable. Cooperating with Tribune reporters, RedEye could produce stories that answer the questions of commuters, 18-to-30-year-olds, etc.

Also unacceptable is that such an urgent local story be buried on page 5—behind, in this order: A stupid reality show; a lunar mission that is at least 13 years away; and the settlement of a lawsuit that followed a 1998 murder.

If Tribune Co. wants young commuters to become loyal RedEye readers, it can't afford to seem indifferent to them. This is a tragically missed opportunity, which suggests to me that the editors of this paper don't care much who it's for, what it should do, or where it's going. Commuters won't learn much about their safety in RedEye, but most of them are going to have to get back on those trains.

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