Mood music and signs of the times from Andrew Jaspan, ex-editor of the Melbourne Age, who worked as a consultant on the recent relaunch of the French daily, Libération. The paper, founded in the heady days of student insurrection in the 1960s, had grown old and jaded along with the generation of soixanthuitards (“68ers”) and its once cool red and black design now looks soooo twentieth century.
Jaspan’s first suggestion was simply that the paper should stop being “red, black and angry”. His second, he told a session of the WAN-IFRA congress, was to suggest that the journalism looked for ways “forward” for its society and didn’t just whinge about problems. And in line with the gradual magazinification of newspapers, he suggested that they banish completely the word “yesterday”. That last one really is a sign of the times.
Tags: Jaspan, Liberation, newspaper, WAN-IFRA
