The Mario Blog

10.26.2008—6am    Post #381
La Tribune launches a new formula and Berliner format for the Google generation

TAKEAWAY: Perhaps it is easier the second time around: we at Garcia Media were involved in the 2006 rethinking of France’s financial daily ? La Tribune?; now, with new ownership, new editors and a dramatically different philosophy, the more colorful, more precise and easier to navigate ? La Tribune? is here.

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Here is the front page of La Tribune for Monday, Oct. 27th, first day of the new formula, in Berliner format, with a new navigator on Page One.
Other pages to be shown here as they become available.

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The old and the new La Tribune front page

Updated October 28, 2008—more updates to come throughout the day today

Serious does not mean boring

I remember my first meeting with La Tribune’s director, Valerie Decamp: it was a lunch at a plush, but quite busy, Paris restaurant. The tall and talkative Valerie, whose newspaper trajectory had brought her to La Tribune from the free newspaper, Metro, knew exactly what she wanted, and how she wanted.

“I want you to make La Tribune very lively, colorful, full of energy, and full of news, analysis, and topics that the readers have not seen elsewhere, that is what I want,” Valerie told me two minutes after we met.

Knowing what the management wants is, indeed, the first step in what you know will be a successful project: a manager who is focused, knows direction, target audiences, and has no preconceived ideas that a “financial daily” has to be boring.

Valerie talks fast, and she wanted the project to move fast.

Fast it was. We began around May, launch of the new-formula La Tribune is Monday, Oct. 27.

Enter the new art director: Eric Beziat

One of Valerie’s most effective moves was to hire Eric Beziat as art director. Together, Eric and I met frequently, both in person and in cyberspace, to create the look that you see here.

Every successful design needs an editor who contributes ideas, and who is sure of what he wants: we found this in La Tribune’s new editor, Erik Izraelewicz,

Highlights:
Larger format: At a time when so many newspapers go smaller, La Tribune’s strategy was to go to the Berliner format, from a standard tabloid. I am an advocate of compact, of course, but in this case, the idea is to allow for each of the sections to stand out. “We want to make a dramatic change that is visible to our audience,” Valerie told me as we discussed the larger format.

New branding: Gone is the old La Tribune logo, in the Bordeaux color with white letters. In is a logo with a blue background, but “attached” visually to a navigator to the best “surprise” stories of the day.

New typography: The type combination now involves Verlag in its various weights, but with an emphasis on boldness rarely seen in traditional finance/economics dailies. Chronicle, an elegant serif font, is used as a secondary font, to bring elegance and contrast to each page.

Color palette: We tested orange before we went for blue, but it was decided that it would be good to have blue as the daily color, and orange for Le Journal de Weekend.

Efficient navigation: Perhaps the most reader-friendly element of this rethinking of La Tribune is the Page One navigator, called L’Essentiel, and that is what it is. Borrowed from the highly successful and efficient What’s News from The Wall Street Journal, it summarizes in a few lines, the top stories that are MUST READ for each day.

Advertising innovation: The new La Tribune will experiment with ad positioning. Already many of these ads have been sold ahead of time, including “silent ad” on Page One navigator, plus interesting display of various strategies as shown here.

Personally, I am extremely happy and pleased with this new formula for La Tribune. Readers will appreciate the fact that this new La Tribune offers something for everyone. Those readers who want to read La Tribune in two or three seatings during the day, will have a great navigator to guide them; the ones who would like to sit down and read more in-depth, will have excellent content to analyze. Visually, the new La Tribune offers more graphics to help readers understand complex stories. For a generation of Google surfers, the ones who want everything now, this new formula of La Tribune has it all—-the newspaper for the Internet generation, but with the seriousness, depth and reliable content that they have come to expect from a brand like La Tribune.

Everybody wins.

Offering advertisers different options

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Inside pages: rhythm and labels that say “click” for topics

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A page about the business and environment

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Le Journal de Weekend: more magazine approach

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For the video of La Tribune’s advertising of its new formula: ?
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=_bB1VTrXuLc

For Mario’s “editorial” on today’s first issue of the new La Tribune (in French):
http://www.latribune.fr/entreprises/communication/publicite—medias/20081026trib000302948/le-journal-de-la-google-generation.html

http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2008/10/france_la_tribune_to_relaunch_next_week.phphttp://www.editorsweblog.org/

Ina Esteva: inspiration is all around her

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I met Ina Esteva a day in March 1962. I was 14 years old and a recently -arrived Cuban refugee in Miami, going to school during the day and working part time as a bus boy at a downtown restaurant called, Suzanne’s. My favorite waitress at that restaurant was a feisty redhead called Marina Cobian. Once a lawyer in Cuba, she, like all the other refugees, had to reinvent herself, which she did. She was so inspiring that I still call her La Divina Marina, or Marina: The Divine One.

To the impressionable young refugee that I was then, Marina taught me to put on a happy face in the worst of circumstances, to think colorfully even in adversity. To this day I remember this.

So here was Marina, in her impeccable pink uniform, smiling to everyone, a big flowerful hanky protruding from her dress pocket as she balanced three plates of black beans, rice and fried plantains on a tray.

Enter Marina’s daughter, Ina——petite, effervescent, and ready for a day at the beach. She would stop there first, to get bus money from Mama. I remember it as if it was today. Ina at 13 was already talking poetry, the arts….and color. Already in her sophomore year of high school, Ina had dedicated a poem to Cuba, titled “Cuba, a pearl lost in the vast blue sea.” President John F. Kennedy apparently liked it, too, and she received a special Kennedy Award. She made us all proud.

Through college, while others worried about the next midterm, Ina could be found lying on the grass, commuting with the moon. She still does, I am sure, based on what her art reflects.

Today, Ina Esteva is a teacher and an artist, living and working in Miami. A new book, Explosion of Color, displays some of her work——the Ina that comes through here is the same one I met that day in 1962 at the Suzanne’s: passionate about her subjects, injecting at least two thoughts per minute into her canvas, living in her world, but escaping through art to worlds that only she inhabits and into which she invites us.

Here the Cuban-American artist captures it all in a quote:

I use color as meaning and intensity of expression, the ever-renewing sequence of change??

I know that La Divina Marina is quite proud. So am I as I prepare to become an Ina Esteva collector and bring some of her colorful world into my home.

Ina Esteva and I recently in Florida

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For more information about Ina Esteva’s book and work:
http://www.blurb.com/books/395510

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It is Diwali holiday in India

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Another colorful Rangoli decoration at the entrance of a home in Delhi tonight. The celebrations for Diwali festival continue, and one hears the sounds of fireworks, reminiscent of Fourth of July celebrations back home.

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This colorful arrangement was in the lobby of my hotel here, Intercontinental The Grand New Delhi as I stepped out for my day of work: miniature altar-like pyramids are built, dozens of small bowls are placed all around them with rice that has been colored in a variety of shades. I ask the bellhop about the meaning of such beautiful arrangement on the floor: “This is a festival of light, celebrating the victory of good over evil. knowledge over ignorance. It is one of our most festive times of the year. The ground of homes and temples is decorated with Rangoli patterns, often made with coloured rice and flour and water to attract the attention of the Goddess Lakshmi. “

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Today Oct. 28 India celebrates Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, a celebration of good over evil. For the Indians, it is a traditional time of feasting, getting together with family and neighbors, and eating tons of sweets.

Diwali is one of India’s biggest festivals: the Indians buy new clothes, light colorful candles all over the house, and consume a never ending array of sweets. Mothers and grandmothers prepare these sweets for days, although a report in The Hindu tells us that more often today “busy mothers are buying sweets in the shops: “It is a boon that the sweet shops are loaded with festival sweets today, so much so, that women are saved the drudgery of preparing sweets at home, though nothing can beat home made sweets.”

The most popular of these sweets is the mithai—-a caloric bomb
made with ingredients like semolina, wheat flour, chickpea flour or thickened milk, to which freshly grated coconut, carrots or white pumpkin is sometimes added. The mixtures are perfumed with sweet spices like cardamom and nutmeg. Nuts and raisins are part of the recipe, and the sweets are then shaped into colorful squares and rounds. I plan to taste some of these, of course.

For more information about the Diwali festival:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/news_and_events/events_diwali.shtml#diwali_dishes

TheMarioBlog posting #130

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