It is Earth Day today. A good opportunity for everyone to stop and take a look at his surroundings, and ask the question: what can I do in the microcosm of my world to help make this a cleaner environment for all of us?
I celebrate it with two pieces from Cuban artist Orestes Larios Zaak’s masterful collection of works. From his Survival Series, these two paintings represent Orestes’ obsession with the environment, and how to use his art to make everyone think about it. Long before the “green brigades” were popular out there, Orestes——who lives in Camaguey, Cuba, and is married to my cousin, Mary—- had already decided to devote his artistic talent to the cause of showing Cuban’s eco systems. There is almost always green in Orestes’ work, which he exhibits worldwide. I am a collector, and because I have quite an eco environment on the back of my Tampa, Florida, home, which backs up to the beautiful Hillsborough River, I have Orestes’ work hanging around the area of the house where his work, and all the green he paints, blends with the natural green outside.
Today, let us all think green.
One newspaper in particular comes to mind. La Tribune, the financial daily of France, devotes a weekly page to Clean Business, profiling business and industry that show a concern for the environment.
Happy Earth Day, everyone, and I urge you to observe your surroundings and determine how green you are today.
La Tribune, of France devotes a page to Green Business, an idea others should match
The media in a new Cuba
I continue to get tons of emails with a variety of viewpoints on my blog concerning the future of the media in Cuba. This one, from Fabiola Santiago, a journalist at The Miami Herald, and author of the novel, Reclaiming Paris, which is not about Paris, but more about reclaiming Havana:
I’d have to write another book to tell you what I think about Cuba, or maybe quote from the last fragment, page 278-279, in Reclaiming Paris (which of course is not about Paris at all, but the nostalgia for the Havana of yesteryear that runs through this town like a never-healing wound). But I’ll just say this: No matter who is president of the USA and what regulations he tightens or relaxes, the ball remains in the same place—inside Cuba.
Seminar for Newspapers, Magazines in Paris
IFRA is sponsoring a one-day seminar May 28 in Paris titled “Design for the News and Magazines Publishing Industry”.
I will be one of the speakers, addressing the topic of Storytelling in a multiplatform media world. Other topics include: Transition from 20 to 40; Small country, great design: the change of the newspaper design in Luxemburg, and informational graphics.
Those interested should go to www.ifra.com/designconference.
Early bird rate until April 24.
Florida newspapers score big with Pulitzers
Two Florida newspapers, three Pulitzer Prizes!
Two Florida newspapers with which I have close ties, The Miami Herald and The St. Petersburg Times, have been honored with Pulitzer Prizes this week. Congratulations to all involved.
At a time when newspapers everywhere struggle for survival, it is fantastic news to read about excellence in journalism as demonstrated by the staffers at The Herald and The Times.
The St. Petersburg Times, my hometown newspaper, won TWO Pulitzers: for National Reporting as well as for Feature Writing.
The staff won in national reporting and was also named a finalist in the public service category for “PolitiFact,” an online database that fact-checked political claims of the 2008 presidential candidates.
The Pulitzer board praised the initiative for “using probing reporters and the power of the World Wide Web to examine more than 750 political claims, separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters.”
The newspaper used a “Truth-O-Meter” graphic that was carried by other national newspapers and on cable networks CNN and MSNBC.
Lane DeGregory was honored for what the Pulitzer board called her “moving, richly detailed story” about a neglected young girl, discovered in a roach-infested room, unable to talk or feed herself, who was adopted by a new family. DeGregory spent six months watching the girl and her new family. She tracked down the girl’s birth mother, the officer who rescued the girl, the doctors who examined her, the foster care worked who found her a home. Additional information came from hundreds of pages of police reports, medical records and court documents. Her story was read by
more than 1 million people online. It generated e-mails from 1,200 people worldwide. Talk about far reaching content!
For Miami Herald photographer, Patrick Farrell his Putlizer Prize came
for his photos after Hurricane Ike and other storms caused a humanitarian disaster in Haiti. His entries included powerful images of a father cradling the body of his 5-year-old son killed by floodwaters.
Farrell said he was “humbled” by the award.
As a Floridian, as a reader of both newspapers, and as a visual journalist who has done work with both dailies at different times in my career, I feel great pride. Both papers are repeat Pulitzer Prize winners. Both newspapers, in my view, are national treasures. We wish them many more years of success.
Marketing and Luxemburg’s L’Essentiel
Photo courtesy of Frank Deville
The free-distribution French language newspaper of Luxemburg has unveiled a marketing campaign which displays this image of Franck Riberya French football midfielder who plays for the German Bundesliga club Bayern Munich. In the ad, the newspaper has superimposed an image of Frankenstein to the body of Ribery. The headline reads: From Franck to Frankenstein,the essential is inside L’Essentiel..
When Ribéry was two years old, he and his family were involved in an automobile accident in Boulogne-sur-Mer after colliding with a truck. Ribéry suffered serious facial injuries that resulted in over one hundred stitches and left two long scars down the right side of his face. This is why some readers have objected to the use of his image in this ad for the newspaper.
Frank Deville, a former professional football player for the Luxemburg National Team, as well as in Germany, had this to say:
I am sorry, but I find this advertisement to be in terribly bad taste. Everyone knows that Ribery has bad scars on his face as a result of an accident when he was a child. So to use him in this connection is, to me, very bad. I cannot imagine that Ribery agreed to allow his image to be used in this way.
We also cannot imagine any newspaper building a marketing campaign around a well known personality like Franck Ribéry, without first getting his approval. We would like to think that player Ribéry agreed to be a good sport about the use of his photo here!
Stay tuned.
TheMarioBlog posting #245