Chicago Red Streak ends Thursday

The Chicago Sun-Times will publish the final edition of its youth-oriented tabloid, Red Streak, this coming Thursday, December 22.

The free paper, launched more than three years ago in response to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye, which went from paid to free in September. Soon thereafter Sun-Times Publishers John Cruickshank said he was considering closing down Red Streak.

“They’ve conceded they can’t sell newspapers to young people,” Cruickshank said. “From our perspective, we just didn’t need to do it any longer ... The battle was just too expensive to go on.”

He declined to disclose the cost to the Sun-Times of Red Streak’s three-year run. But he said there would be no staff layoffs as a result of folding the publication.

RedEye Publisher Brad Moore was not immediately available for comment.