What to publish and to whom?
Enriching the newsdesign concepts from the start reinforces the identity of a media, newspaper, magazine or website: its editorial line and its personality would become more obvious for the public. So your reader will make your media «his» own. Your readers’ fidelity depends in the content itself first.
A structured press
Two axis for making your publishing recipe: the intention or the design?
Normally,a press layout is thought before being sketched and drafted: the graphical work is the second milestone of the process.
Matrioshka dolls
Think tank defines a direction, the editorial line, the publication's axis, which owns its self orientation and tendance: exactly where stands a publication’s core identity. There is a tone and a way to express it. Including the topics choosen, a full range of fields covered and discovered. Topics possess their own axis, totally unique, which makes one topic never cloned from another one. There must be a hierarchy to present them, in ways like lead or second and so on, sections, rubrics, sequences… Various genres and entries are multiplicated (story facts, timeline, trusted experts comments, key analysis, interviews and/or crossed-iinterviews, information graphs, photos, sketches…) to appeal the readers: he decides what he wants to catch first. Recipes are sophisticated, to know if they are tasty, they have to be served on a regular basis, so the reader can find what he looks after each time. There is a promise, in which credibility, accuracy and faithfulness are engaged. A contract between the news producers, obviously journalists and not only designers, and the readers.
All is in all
The ideal matrioshka contruction in a structured news production may occurs from one and only article to the whole publication issue. The same hierarchical structure exists from an article scale to the whole magazine. There are choices, from the first page main title and lead until the last legended photo.
EditingPlus chooses how to organise all pieces to bring a strong publication into life or to renew an existing one.
Thousands ways to read
Catching reader’s interest when, where, and how he wants it: how to entrer his life
There are thousands ways to read, not less to write! Which one should be the most appropriate to target your readers? Would visuals, colours, pictures, graphic elements guide him or her? Or he or she will digg directly in articles topics because they were discussed early on the radio? Is he a regular reader, or he just picks up your publication occasionally? Marketing give some archetypes among other detailed portraits, without giving a full description.
Everybody reads, but how?
Readers ourselves, we may imagine easily this reader and represent him or her in situation: according to his her mood, the reading place, his reading habits, the choosen moments, the ways to read… His or her sensitivity vary. A publication travels along with its reader’s life and multiplies diversity to catch his or her interest in various circumstances in life, at the right moments, in places he or she chooses in, when he or she wants it.
EditingPlus reads a lot, imagine your reader, helps you to represent him and her to build up an interesting publication.
Talk to your readers
Listening to their readers is a mission for every journalist.
The relationship between medias and readers changes a lot. Press is no more an untouchable idol. Press is critised and its servants, the journalists, too… Journalists, editors, and readers must find a way to communicate in both ways! To explain, to provide debates and balanced arguments becomes essential. Giving different points of view, preserve objectivity, keep a distance and a critical view is so much needed.
A close-up on readers’ section
How funny and interesting could it be to read readers column some time? Reading readers, two stunning tendencies are revealing themselves: first, the proximity between the reader with his media, even when letters are sometimes violent! Nobody in the press may ignore it (and nobody does!).
Second idea, readers letters are an indicator: how did the readers receive the message? How did they feel it? The editor or the redaction pool may answer by himself or choose a redactor to do it. More modern is to give an entire responsability to a dedicated ombudsman, just in between readers and the media…
Readers column is often a strong reaction which explains how strong was the original message. It could be used by the redaction pool to evaluate how facts and stories could be better in their way to present the facts, to write, to dramatise, to narrate what happens!
The easiest is to react, the quickest comes a comment…
Living in a magazine
Living in a magazine, video clip directed by Dawn Shadforth (RSA Films) for the band Zoot Woman in 2001. Credit: Wall of Sound. Watch it on YouTube.
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