The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA), a Landmark paper, is very well-known for its graphics, design and photo departments.
When you combine all this talent with crafted words, you get this.
A six-day photo essay “On Time and Tides”
Such a big photographic celebration impacted the community of Hampton Roads and the paper had to add new pages for “Your Waters: A Readers Response” in order to accommodate some of the best pictures sent by the local people.
And you can see, the photos from the readers were terrific.
Matching the quality and poetry of the staff photographers.
It is a visual pleasure.
Disclosure: Deborah Withey, the paper´s DME/Presentation editor, is my wife.
It seems that Metro International is rolling out special summer editions of its dailies in coastal areas of France, Spain, Italy and Greece.
The free papers are designed to attract advertisers by offering an opportunity to target 18 to 45-year-old consumers during the summer months.
According to Metro’s head of global sales, Alistair Ballantyne, the move reflects the changing media consumption habits of readers in these markets over the summer.
The company stops publication of its daily editions in some urban centres during the vacation season.
Summer holidays are lethal for many European newspapers, but the British and German ones have discovered a few years ago that there was a big audience for their newspapers in many Mediterranean beach resorts.
So, they are printed there by local newspapers that make good money with these summer editions.
The same happens right now, all the year around, with many communities of retired people that have moved to south Europe.
Distribution flexibility is the name of the game.
After the redesign in the USA of the Portland Press Herald, a reader wrote this letter, in response to the paper being slightly downsized by 1.25 inches:
“To The Editors:
So what do I think of the new smaller sized Portland Press Herald?
I would say there are some good things and some bad things.
I always read my paper at the breakfast table all alone. And wow! There’s a lot more room for my waffles, coffee, juice, etc. That’s good.
But when I finished reading the paper, I spotted a housefly on my refrigerator, so I rolled up the paper and tried to whack it. I missed by about 1.25 inches. That’s bad.
Paul Blaisdell
South Portland, Maine”
I just read the first issue of Blueprint: Design Your Life is a new bimonthly women’s interest magazine published by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
They intend to release 2 test issues with an initial base circulation of 250,000 and plans to begin regular bimonthly publication in 2007.
The magazine is being targeted at women age 25-40, and will compete with magazines such as Real Simple (whose former editor Tom Prince will be heading the new magazine) and Domino for readers.
It is a move to become more competitive in the younger demographic, and diversify its interests outside the core Martha Stewart brand.
Good design and excellent “quick-read-formats”.
Newspapers must learn from magazines.
They spot new reader trends before than anybody else.
According to the Toronto Star, the Public Relations company that orchestrated the Putin media show during the recent G8 meeting was Ketchum.
Good job.
Roy Greenslade, in his media blog for Guardian Unlimited, selects memorable quotes like this one:
“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast’
William T. Sherman, circa 1884
With the title from F. Scott Fitzgerald´s unfinished story written in the year of his death this book presents the colorful world of Paris-American journalists during the interwar years in a city that was “the centre of American journalism in Europe.”
This kind of journalism is gone, but Ronals Weber does a great job explaining the “old days”.
Weber is professor emeritus of American studies at the University of Notre Dame.
The Spanish Prime Minister, the socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is learning very fast how to become a popular politician.
Today, in El Pais, he tells his secret:
“I have learned to deliver headlines… At the beginning I thought that present ideas was enough.”
Very good, we have a new member for the soundbite politicians club!
Michelle McNally, Photo Director of The New York Times was taking questions from the web readers, and the end of the conversation includes a great slideshow that offers at a candid view of his photogrpahers.
She quotes also an interesting recent job posting for a staff photographer at The Times:
“The New York Times has an opening for a photographer in New York City.
Candidates must be high energy, passionate and dedicated.
They should come equipped with the skills, drive and creative abilities necessary to make compelling images for all areas of the newspaper — news, sports and features.
We’re looking for a photographer who will give their all on any and every assignment from the mundane to the exotic and who easily gets along with others.
Must be able and willing to work nights and weekends.
Knowledge of the web, multimedia and video will be strongly considered. Technical proficiency in Macintosh computers a must. Send portfolio and resume.”
Mark Hamilton, a former journalist and currently a journalism instructor in Vancouver (Canada) makes an interesting comment in his blog:
“My newspaper consumption has actually gone up since I stopped reading dead tree editions.
Between my Bloglines account and surfing, I visit 10 newspaper websites at least once a day, and there are probably another five or six I wind up visiting in an average days surfing, as the result of links in blogs, Google searches, etc.
That compares to the two newspapers I used to read a day.”
And, as you can see, instead of a traditional boring picture he uses this excellent one.
The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA), a Landmark paper, is very well-known for its graphics, design and photo departments.
