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THETATTOOBLOG.COM: Yet another failed effort to attract young readers by insulting them

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Yet another failed effort to attract young readers by insulting them

It doesn't surprise us that The Chicago Sun-Times had to kill off its "youth-focused Red Streak" tabloid that aimed to attract more young readers by offering up news briefs, entertainment nonsense and other crap.
Apparently, Red Streak couldn't find enough young people willing to pay a quarter a day to get something less than a real newspaper.
Here are The Tattoo, which is attracting a global audience of young readers, we will never concede that newspapers should dumb themselves down to pull in new readers. In fact, what they really need to do is beef themselves up.
Newspapers should stop being so dowdy and gray -- and so damn polite all the time -- and begin to take young readers seriously. You don't do that by offering them pablum or briefs, you do that by writing in a style that's intersting and providing news stories that make a difference to their lives.
Newspapers cater so much to their increasingly elderly readers that it's almost as if they have some sort of collective death wish. Let's all go to the grave together or something.
But young people will read newspapers that matter to them.
And you don't do that with Red Streaks and the like. You do it by turning out really good newspapers.

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