An unhappy cover subject
We have mentioned in this blog before that for Olivier Royant, editor of Paris Match and his team, the street is the best laboratory in which to find, to photograph and to report news of interest.
This week, the laboratory transported itself to the beautiful streets of the Spanish resort of Marbella, where former French presidential candidate, Segolene Royal, was spotted walking hand in hand with a man identified as her boyfriend, Andre Hadjez.
Royal and her friend made the cover of Paris Match, the ultimate exclusive story with photos. But it did not make Royal happy.
According to Reuters reports, Royal is suing Paris Match for publishing photos of her and the man described as her boyfriend, saying it has violated her privacy.The Socialist politician is claiming damages estimated at 50,000 euros ($63,000), Paris Match said on its website Monday. The cover story carried the headline “Segolene Royal, a free woman” and photos of her holding hands with a Hadjez on its cover and inside pages.
Whatever the results of the Royal versus Paris Match legal proceedings, one thing is for sure: readers in France woke up to a story they had not heard about before, not to mention the photos. In this day of 24/7 news cycles, Olivier Royant still plans his magazine with a careful eye to the street laboratory, and where the exclusive story can be found. Sometimes, in the rush to report the very visible stories, reporters and photographers ignore the more “invisible” story. That story, usually, is what makes for a scoop.
If not an exclusive, at least a story with the element of surprise. Regardless of technology, it is still up to an editor’s instinct and his abilities to pursue a story of interest that counts.
At Paris Match, this concept is very much alive.
Go here:
www.parismatch.fr
Cutting through the visual clutter: Does your homepage pass the test?
Visual clutter happens most on high-content sites that lack organization in their design. It’s often overlooked or ignored and the result is a poor user experience, missed stories or information and a very short time on the web site. A visual segmentation test shows you exactly what’s wrong with the organization of your site and offers the opportunity to reorganize and create a design that keeps your users on your site longer and keeps them coming back. In this post, Mario describes the organization process and offers advice for avoiding clutter on your homepage. Here’s a sampling from the post:
A cursory look at most news sites and it becomes very obvious, regardless of how good the content, things are hard to find. Often, users don’t even know where to start. It’s as if everything has been dumped onto a page, crammed “above the scroll,” and left to the users to get their machetes out and make their way through the visual clutter. Users don’t want to have to work that hard. They’re too busy.
The tendency is to organize by subject matter or topic. And that works for building an information architecture or site map, but visually it’s better to organize by function. Nielsen’s advice works here—what are the main reasons users come to your site? For a news site the answers are normally to get news, to look for a job, to read columns, to share, to look at photos, to find out what’s going on for the weekend, etc. These are motivations more than categories and should be the basis for how the site should be organized visually.
For the rest of the article go here:
http://garciainteractive.com/blog/view/33/
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To read TheRodrigoFino blog, in Spanish, go:
https://garciamedia.com/latinamerica/blog/
TheMarioBlog posting #205
TheMarioBlog posting #204