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My column this week begins with a visit to an el station where a guy paid $200 a week by the Tribune hands out copies of RedEye from 6 to 10 AM. He told me he gives away a few hundred every day, while “seven or eight” people pass him carrying the Sun-Times. I happened to go by his station one evening this week, and apparently he hadn’t made it to work that morning — sealed bundles of RedEye sat in a stack by the station door. There you have it, I thought — hand the public a free RedEye and they’ll take it, but no one wants the paper enough to bend over and pull a copy out of a bundle.
It’s an idea reminiscent of the one Alberts Brooks had in Lost in America: when his character’s wife loses her head in Las Vegas and gambles away their life’s savings, he tries to sell the casino boss on the idea that it would make for wonderful PR if the casino gave them back their money. Casinos are in the business of keeping the money, and American businesses are in the business of putting each other out of business. (Though collusion has its own proud history.)
Better make that Plan A.
