Thursday, January 26, 2012

Se og Hør To Hunt Down Celebs Like Paparazzi



Pas på, Mary!! The tabloids are about to ramp up the stalking! Your nasty, flippant attitude to journalists who have the misfortune of being assigned to one of your rare "work" events will no longer be tolerated by certain members of the media. Talking down to them and being mean won't work in this new Danish press environment. This kind of approach to publishing only grows, not diminishes. Your bogan Mary-Antoinette routine may just bring you down to guillotine-level, and even if you manage to escape to a Belle Property-negotiated Gold Coast manse with a buff-but-dumb footie player toy boy, you'd do best to behave or your makeup free, aging visage yelling at the snot-nosed, royal children as you all leave the supermarket will be splattered all over No Idea, Women's Day, Hello! Magazine, and Billed Bladet so that the whole world can laugh at you. Even the US edition of Vanity Fair may wish to market you and Derf as the laughing-stock royals who can't even match those racist, sexually challenged losers Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Wallis had nice clothes and jewels to distract from her looks. If you keep selling off the Prada and Hugo Boss separates at Haberdash.dk, you might soon be down to a high street muu-muu and sequiny flip-flops with a fake Chanel logo.

Watch out, you too, Derf! Those cute, blonde, "family friend" pieces that dangle off you from time to time will not just be fair game, but more frequently sought out. You'll be tossed in the tumbrals with less knee-jerk reaction than your wife-bot, but you'll not end this game of life with either the funds or freedom you so enjoy right now if you're not careful. You want to skate through a reign as Frederik X? Leave this whole charade and buy a bar in Key West, trading gold epaulets for a baseball cap and flip-flops to be worn in anonymity? Those are today's choices, and easy ones. Screw up, and you'll be wondering why your reign is suddenly filled with a restless population who demands you earn your tin medals and ten nannies (plus six for the children).

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Politiken article on Se og Hør's new tactics.

Se og Hør sharpens the tabloid profile.

The magazine has been relaunched today with a promise of more paparazzi substance, more celebrity revelations and more humour.

The new layout is particularly suited for photo pages.

The reason is that it is harder for other media to 'cite pictures' than plain text, explains managing editor Kim Henningsen.

"Our two toughest competitors eb.dk and bt.dk every week steal our four to five best stories. Sometimes they remain within the context quote, other times they do not. But in Denmark, one does not steal pictures, so now we will ensure that buyers of Se og Hør get something unique in terms of more of the visual documentation that belongs to individual stories. It's great that readers demand more," says the editor of politiken.dk.

Gossip should be fun

This week's edition of Se og Hør has an image driven reportage of Rasmus Seebach's holiday in Los Angeles where readers can see the singer eating a burger, visiting a fitness center and buying alcohol.

Not exactly a tabloid 'need-to-know'-story, and one which has also not been picked up by competitors.

The story is equipped with a new banner, 'Warning: strong talk" that signals a certain ironic distance from the revelation in nature.

"We will not be perfidious and vicious. It takes more strength to serve up these stories with a humourous touch. We take the best of the tabloid universe and deliver it with a twinkle in the eye of the reader and say, 'Hey, can you open these pages? Yes, we know that you dare to,'" says Kim Henningsen.

Prioritisation of humour can also be seen in the new weekly collaboration with one of its former 'enemies', comedian Casper Christensen, whose comedic team is behind the new element 'Satire Police'.

Going to the limit and sometimes a little over

That there is a significantly greater increase in the volume of paparazzi pictures does not mean that Se og Hør will be more provocative in the way the images are made available.

This will be done 'within the law and with respect for those photographed' says Kim Henningsen.

"We do not go further than we already do. So to the limit and sometimes a little over. But we are expanding the range of celebrities, especially in the reality genre. So it is more paparazzi, paparazzi not worse," says the editor-in-chief.

More paparazzi probably also means more lawsuits from celebrities who feel their toes are being stepped on?

"I expect actually not. I've been a manager for two and a half years and have only been involved in three lawsuits - against Anni Fønsby, Flemming Østergaard and Johnny Hansen from Kandis - none of which have been lost. I think most celebrities go along on the premise that people want to see them in situations where the camera is off and the makeup is cleaned away."

With the story of the three non-lost court cases, however, is the fact that only one of them was done conclusively.

And it ended up - after all - that the magazine had to pay 112,000 kroner in lost profits primarily to Anni Fønsby because the magazine had published a series of daring modelling photos of her that were to be used for a calendar.

Se og Hør celebrated the verdict, however, as a victory because they had not been convicted of a violation of privacy.

So you feel that you have a good grip on where the boundaries of privacy go?

"Yes. We have an order of the Press Council in a case where Anni Fønsby had complained that we had photographed her, her husband and their little girl while they went for a walk on Østerbrogade. You could not recognise the child, because we do not put paparazzi on children. And here, said the Press Council, public figures must accept that a magazine like Se og Hør are taking pictures when you move in public spaces, and those images are not brought forth in a bad sense," said Kim Henningsen.

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