Portugal, that other country that used to sell itself as “more than you can imagine” (today it’s “Europe’s West Coast”), is home to the world’s best designed newspaper, i. Short for informação, i launched in 2009 to critical acclaim, and the newspaper has just been judged the World’s Best-Designed Newspaper by the Society for News Design.
Tag archives: newspaper
The New Age: not an agent of change
TNA Media has launched the long-awaited, and much-debated, newspaper The New Age. Its front page, its second after the freebie Heritage Day special, reflects editor Henry Jeffreys’ careful juggling act of batting away any criticism that the newspaper is obviously pro-ANC while also creating interest during a rather slow news cycle.
Paywalls an act of desperation
A move by Rupert Murdoch to stash the content of his global media empire behind a paywall*, and the rather unseemly rush with which any number of publishers desperate for new revenue sources followed him, serves as but another indication that all is not well in the world of media.
How the world cup came to redefine the Daily Dispatch
The 2010 FIFA World Cup threw up some formidable obstacles for editor Andrew Trench and his team at East London daily, the Daily Dispatch (owned by Avusa Media).
Port Elizabeth, whose stadium played host to a number of world cup games, rests on the edge of the newspaper’s circulation footprint, and is also the home of rival The Herald (also published by Avusa). Residents of East London felt a keen sense of disappointment after having had to witness Buffalo City Municipality’s flopped attempts to try and lure a world cup team to use the city as a base says, says Trench.
World cup: The Mercury takes on Babel
In Durban, The Mercury’s editor Angela Quintal grabbed the 2010 FIFA World Cup as an opportunity for some creative thinking and innovation at her paper. Quintal decided to use the event to show the market (and her readers) that “as a newspaper The Mercury was not the conservative business read of old and could lead the way in terms of a fresh and different approach.”
World cup: newspaper editors innovate amid circulation decline
The 2010 FIFA World Cup has been the biggest South African news story so far this year. The tournament dominated media coverage over several months, both in the build-up to and during the actual event. Newspapers sat between a rock and a hard place during the world cup, as television ruled with its live broadcasts and online was first with live commentary, opinion and blow-by blow recounts.
Re-designing news challenges journos, publishers
All The News That’s Fit to Print, to quote the most famous newspaper motto of all time, has of course become less about reams and reams of words stuffed onto cheap paper and more about words and images strategically placed to tell a story in a way that is accessible to readers. Visual journalists like Charles Apple play an increasingly important role as the news industry attempts to increase engagement, with consumers used to sound bites and quick synopses of news as it happens. Their work and strategic importance is already apparent locally in the recent redesigns of South African newspapers Rapport and City Press.
Behind the trillion dollar billboard
Conceptualised and created by TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, these billboards and posters for The Zimbabwean newspaper were made entirely of worthless Zimbabwean bank notes. The billboard is made up of trillions and trillions and trillions worth of Zim dollar notes, which worked out to be cheaper than using paper.
MyNews24 shows how media can use Twitter
MyNews24 has jumped from the 5th spot on Mark’s Twitter News Ranking Index to 1st. In a month. The road to success seems to be very much in line with a recent column MarkLives published on how news organisations can effectively use Twitter.
SA Newspapers and their no sense approach to Twitter
MarkLives published a mini-survey on the popularity of SA news services on micro-blogging service Twitter in December last year. We thought it was time for an update.