Hot Type, for the week of November 8, 2002 -- continued Red Streak looks less committed than RedEye to short-attention-span theater. It runs actual stories on page one and even a few long stories inside. A piece on Microsoft in the Tuesday Red Streak looked actually daunting -- it had been posted at salon.com days earlier. Red Streak has either less attitude than RedEye or simply a more comfortable attitude -- it's a cheesy tabloid produced by a more serious tabloid whose editors understand the form. I'm told that "Scurrilous -- Gossip, Goofs and Scandals," the daily back-page feature that's big on babes, is the personal project of Michael Cooke, editor in chief of the Sun-Times. Red Streak is like a stripped-down Sun-Times without airs and with more sex. Women staffers can hardly complain; everyone knows 18-to-34s are cool with sex. Issue one introduced "P.O.'d -- Confessions of a Chicago Curmudgeon." It was written by Mike Danahey, who's only 42, beyond the demographic but not really ancient enough to pass as a bona fide crank. He posed for his picture wearing a flat cap that made him look older. Danahey admitted in print that the theory behind Red Streak seemed kind of stupid to him. This was safe for him to do. All the research and theorizing was done on the Tribune's side of the street, so Danahey was actually making fun of RedEye. Editor & Publisher's Mark Fitzgerald promptly dubbed Danahey an "annoyance . . . stumbling out of the blocks." I liked Danahey. I called him up to find out where he's from, and he said he's on loan from Hollinger's Elgin Courier News, where he's a feature writer. Danahey came late to journalism from PR; further in his background are some courses at Second City. He told me that in his view the point of growing up is getting to know interesting people of all ages, and if his new young readers don't understand that yet, he means to tell them. He's an adult writing as an adult (I forgot to ask what his sign is). Fitzgerald and I disagree about Danahey, but I think all this means is that neither one of us has a clue how to judge the worth of a newspaper for people who don't read newspapers. I also noticed that last Friday's Red Streak ran the same Debra Pickett column that appeared that day in the Sun-Times. Her Red Streak tag is "Age 29," and since Pickett turns 30 next July that could be a clue as to how long Cooke expects Red Streak to be around. No one told Pickett she was about to debut in Red Streak, but she's OK with it. She likes her Red Streak picture better than her Sun-Times picture (it's happier), though she's not so sure about her writing. It seems Red Streak ran her column exactly the way she'd turned it in at 5:30 Thursday evening. The Sun-Times version reflected the editing and rewriting of serious journalists. "I like working with editors," Pickett says. "I definitely am a writer who recognizes the need to be edited. I don't know if it's more 29 years old to not have an editor." It's certainly more inarticulate. Here's how her raw copy began in Red Streak: "I thought it would be like backpacking across Europe. Just in Milwaukee, rather than, say Milan." Here's how that came out in the Sun-Times: "I thought it would be like backpacking across Europe. I'd throw everything I needed -- extra warm gloves and ski hat, granola bar, ChapStick, postmodern novel -- into a single bag, hoist it over my shoulders and hop the train from city to city. I'd hit the cultural high points and take in the scenery, guided only by wit and whim. It would be just like Europe. Except that it would be in Milwaukee." When Newspaper Guild writers like Pickett show up to their own surprise in a new newspaper (if technically a new edition of an old newspaper), the guild has an issue on its hands. But it's small potatoes. Here's the big thing the guild's Sun-Times unit has already told management it needs to discuss: "They're putting out a paper they call an edition of the Sun-Times, and they're using nonguild people on it," unit chair Bob Mutter tells me. Red Streak was a three-week crash project launched when RedEye was announced, and a handful of writers and editors from nonguild Hollinger papers such as the Courier Sun were brought in to work under Cooke and make it happen. "We can definitely see cooperating with them," says Mutter. "Or we could have seen it if they'd asked for our cooperation." The biggest commitment Red Streak has made so far to its readers is to provide them with lots of solid information on sex. Last Wednesday introduced "Ask Ellie" ("She wants to romp, he wants to cuddle" was the headline), by Ellie Tesher from the Toronto Star. Last Thursday offered "Sex Matters" by Meghan Bainum, a senior at the University of Kansas who broke in a year or so ago in her student newspaper. ("She has no shame and she has no fear," a school administrator told the Chronicle of Higher Education.) And Friday unveiled "Em & Lo," another column you could have read a week earlier at salon.com. It looks like sex in Red Streak will be like the crossword puzzle in the New York Times, getting harder as the week goes on. Em & Lo's theme: "Love, honor, and anal play / Should I strap one on to save my marriage?" This Monday and Tuesday Tesher was back again. Can RedEye compete with Red Streak's formidable stable of sexologists? Not likely. Whatever RedEye is, it's still a Tribune paper. News Bites • Seen breaking bread together the night before the elections at 437 Rush (the old Riccardo's) on Rush Street: Lynn Sweet, Washington bureau chief of the Sun-Times; Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown; Bruce Dold, editor of the Tribune editorial page; congressional candidate Rahm Emanuel; Democratic political consultant David Axelrod; Democratic County Board candidate Forrest Claypool; Democratic state senator Carol Ronen; retiring Democratic state representative Judy Erwin; and Emanuel aide David Blitstein. Axelrod's been holding these election-eve dinners for journalists and politicians -- many of them, like Emanuel and Claypool, his clients -- for years. The conversation was all politics, waged in a shorthand incomprehensible to the laity, and the journalists present paid for their meals. I mention the dinner at the risk of implying that I'm implying there was something improper about it. • A memorial service for Tom Fitzpatrick will be held at 3 PM Sunday, November 24, at the Tribune Tower. Fitzpatrick, who died in June, is best remembered in Chicago as a Pulitzer-winning columnist for the Sun-Times in the 70s, but he'd also worked for the Tribune. Anyone planning to attend should RSVP at Fitzpatrickmemorial@yahoo.com or by calling Dorothy Storck at 312-944-1179. Depressing as it sounds, Tribune security will be checking names. Send tips, tirades, and comments to hottype@chicagoreader.com Copyright © 2002 Chicago Reader, Inc. All rights reserved.