Well, ok, it's freebie, available in 1,000 bright orange newspaper boxes and at gyms, convenience stores and drugstores (?) across the city. And, well, yeah, it's a "youth" paper. Oh, and a hip new web site. Sigh. Here's how the Baltimore Sun Media Group described their new offering, 'b':
The tabloid newspaper and Web site will focus on news, sports and entertainment news and blogs and listings geared to readers in the 18- to 34-year-old range. It plans to rely on reader-generated material for about a third of its content. The rest will come from its staff of about 20 and The Sun and other Tribune Co.-owned newspapers and entertainment listings from the company's metromix.com site as well as Metromix sites in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The tabloid also has struck content-sharing agreements with local radio stations WTMD-FM and WNST-AM.
Do any of these "youth" products actually succeed? I know CanWest's Dose didn't — and although they didn't give their readers enough credit for brains (it aimed too low), they actually managed to avoid the usual cringeworthy looking like grownups pretending to be cool. (Think 55 year old men in baggy pants with backwards ball caps making gang signs and say "What up, dude! I'm jiggy wit dat.") Dose has survived as a web only production, but I'm guessing it's something of a rarity. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe college kids DO want to go play in a mainstream media ghetto and be forcefed beer ads, lame recipies and self-serving "user-contributed" videos while reading blog post from Sun staff on topics like this:
To b? or Not to b? - You tell me.
Bill
Source: Sun launches 'b' free paper, Web site for ages 18-34 -- baltimoresun.com
Just found your site. Great job. Subscribed immediately.
Also totally agreed with your comment about Dirck and big gear v. small.
Rosenblum
Posted by: Rosenblum | April 30, 2008 at 09:10 AM