This is the weekend edition of TheMarioBlog and will be updated as needed. The next blog post is Monday, January 27
TAKEAWAY: The President of France, the First Lady and Paris Match journalist, and the beautiful (and younger) actress. It’s the January story that the French can’t get enough of. Here’s how Paris Match covers this story close to home.
It is a story made to order for Paris Match.
It is also a story with connections to Paris Match—-in a way.
It is the type of story that titillates, while portraying the frailties of the human condition, the lure of temptation in high places (not very different from those in lower places, by the way).
It is a love triangle involving famous people.
The President of France.
The First Lady of France ( is she still the First Lady?)
The young film actress.
The thriller part comes when the President fearlessly rides a motorcycle in the wee hours for a rendezvous with his new love.
The soap opera part: the President’s current partner, a well known journalist (who writes for Paris Match) takes to the hospital with a condition that a Spanish newspaper described as the “blues of melancholia”. Translate that to mean: the pain of heartbreak, something those of us lesser mortals suffer without the benefit of a medical team to soothe the tormenting blues.
This is the stuff that sells newspapers and magazines.
For Paris Match, a story close to home, where one of their own is a protagonist.
In the Paris Match edition that just hit the kiosks, readers will see a cover story with an exclusive photo of actress Julie Gayet, the other woman. It’s a photo that makes the young actress look peaceful and sure footed, as if on the way somewhere.
I had a chat with good friend Olivier Royant, editor of Paris Match (a disclaimer: I am currently a consultant to Paris Match, working with the team on a variety of ongoing projects, including digital).
“Ten days after the tsunami, we are still talking about Gayet-gate. It is still the center of conversation. In a country where hard political stories dominate the mainstream newspapers, this perfect tabloid scoop took everyone off guard. It definitively broke the final political taboo in France and brought the mainstream information networks into the president’s love life. Things will never be the same again,” Olivier told me.
Has the scandal help sell more magazines?
“Yes,” Olivier says, ” the French magazines that have been covering the story have witnessed an increase in sales over the past two weeks. “
And there is the much expected sequel: Which First Lady will President Hollande will take when he meets with President and Mrs. Obama in the White House next month?
A cliffhanger worthy of the best Mexican or Brazilian soap opera. And a sure bet that the story will keep selling newspapers and magazines.
Catch up with the story via CNN report:
http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2014/01/22/france-hollande-scandal-bittermann-pkg.cnn&video_referrer=
And speaking of magazine covers
Here is the cover for this weekend’s edition of The New York Times Magazine. Unorthodox and all about Hillary Clinton!
(As posted by David Joachim—@davidjoachim—of The New York Times’ Washington Bureau)