Down market: two words that I have heard often during the course of my career. Yes, I have completed many projects around the globe where the goal was to either bring a newspaper title closer to the masses, or to enhance (translate that into bolder and more colorful) an existing already very down market product.
Well, it looks like it’s bold and loud at the new HuffPost:
“We’re doubling down on our bold, splashy style, and serving up the news with a sense of humor, outrage and empathy,” Lydia Polgreen, new HuffPost editor wrote in an editor’s note announcing the redesign.”‘
And HuffPost is going to capitalize on what is the mother’s milk of down market publications: headlines. How can we ever forget that textbook example of a tabloidy headline: Headless body found in Topless Bar.
For example, a recent HuffPost headline, following the ousting of Fox’s personality Bill O’Reilly on sexual harassment charges: ‘Billy on the Street.”
The redesign also has provided an opportunity to shorten the name from The Huffington Post, which the design team found too long, to the more Tweet-like HuffPost.
In her letter to the readers, announcing the redesign, editor Polgreen wrote:
“We’ve got a new name, look and mission ― to tell the stories of people who have been left out of the conversation.”
Polgreen makes her case for a more populist HuffPost (a nicer term for down market tabloid journalism, I guess), when she writes:
“I think we can do better for people who feel that too much political and economic power has accrued to a very small elite. People who feel they are on the outside looking in at the prosperity created by globalization and technological transformation. That the game is rigged; that the deck is stacked against them; who feel that the house always wins. That definition includes many, many people who voted for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. I suspect it also includes the majority of people who voted for Trump. It certainly encompasses voters on both sides of Brexit and the French presidential vote that took place over the weekend.”
Take a look at the new HuffPost and decide for yourself.
But, to help you along, as you read the new HuffPost, a window pops up at the bottom of your screen that reads:
“We are so Huffin’ Excited”
Perhaps we are. Perhaps we should be. Are the readers?
Oh, the art of headline writing
For everyone who ever struggled with the writing a headline, and for everyone who appreciates a catchy, seductive headline, here is a good read.
Speaking Engagements Coming Up
SIPConnect 2017, to be held in Miami June 21-23, is a program of the Inter American Press Association, IAPA, or SIP (Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa). The venue will be the Hilton Miami Downtown Hotel.
Details:
Join us at the SIPConnect Hemispheric Conference 2017. Organized by the IAPA, SIPConnect is a gathering of media and digital businesses to encourage more audiences and higher revenues. It’s a laboratory for new ideas and successful experiences for the digital transformation. As in the 2016 successful meeting that was attended by media from the US, Latin America and the Caribbean, experts in digital businesses and representatives of innovative companies will participate in this event.
For more information: http://www.sipiapa.org/notas/1211078-llamado-sipconnect-2017