Monday, March 06, 2006
Red carpet-bomb
Sorry I haven't posted in a while... I had to deal with my own publication. But the Oscars have me seeing Red all over again.
Scott, one of my partners in crime, turned to me last night and said, "You know, Red Eye will probably run that whole speech by Reese Witherspoon." Well, no, that would be an awful lot of text for Red, but there Reese is, reliably on the cover, with the completely meaningless headline "Oscar Queen."
I'm not sure what this cover is meant to convey, other than the fact that Red has access to wire photos. And don't give me that "the only angle on the Oscars is pretty faces" crap. There are at least two angles that Red's cover could have taken that would have drawn in their target audience as much as Reese's mug. The first would have been to put Three 6 Mafia on the cover, or at least mention them somewhere. Half the away messages in my Buddy List last night were some variation on "It's Hard To Be a Pimp." The song's win and the reaction to it were one of the most interesting things that happened last night -- why not come up with some cover line that uses these fine young gents to describe the mood of the whole evening?
The other option, of course, would be to use some cover angle that reflected the results as a whole. That's what the Orange County Register did, in a story pointing out that no one film dominated (in fact, six different films won the six major categories). This would have been far more useful than just providing a souped-up list of winners or funny highlights, which Red's readers probably already know from TV and the Internet anyway.
Scott, one of my partners in crime, turned to me last night and said, "You know, Red Eye will probably run that whole speech by Reese Witherspoon." Well, no, that would be an awful lot of text for Red, but there Reese is, reliably on the cover, with the completely meaningless headline "Oscar Queen."
I'm not sure what this cover is meant to convey, other than the fact that Red has access to wire photos. And don't give me that "the only angle on the Oscars is pretty faces" crap. There are at least two angles that Red's cover could have taken that would have drawn in their target audience as much as Reese's mug. The first would have been to put Three 6 Mafia on the cover, or at least mention them somewhere. Half the away messages in my Buddy List last night were some variation on "It's Hard To Be a Pimp." The song's win and the reaction to it were one of the most interesting things that happened last night -- why not come up with some cover line that uses these fine young gents to describe the mood of the whole evening?
The other option, of course, would be to use some cover angle that reflected the results as a whole. That's what the Orange County Register did, in a story pointing out that no one film dominated (in fact, six different films won the six major categories). This would have been far more useful than just providing a souped-up list of winners or funny highlights, which Red's readers probably already know from TV and the Internet anyway.
