Migros Magazine Photos on Flickr [en]

Four photographs of me, and one of my hands typing, taken by the photographer who came for Migros Magazine in December.

[fr] Cinq photos prises par la photographe qui a fait les images pour l'article dans Migros Magazine, sont maintenant sur Flickr. Photos mises en ligne avec son autorisation. Merci!

I’ve uploaded five photographs taken by the photographer for the interview I gave to Migros Magazine.

Photograph of Stephanie blogging.

The photographer, is a very nice person who kindly allowed me to put them online for you to see. I’d like to point out how extraordinarily patient she was during the whole three hours of the photo session — and she was using her sick collegue’s material, on top of that. I guess patience is a quality needed to do the job, but still, she really made the whole thing a pleasant experience, despite its length. Thanks!

Update 01.06.2005: photographer’s name removed at her request.

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German Article in Migros Magazin [en]

Material from my interview with Migros Magazine was re-used for an other article in the German-language counterpart, Migros Magazin. Should I be unhappy about how it was done?

[fr] Un morceau d'interview et la photo prise pour mon interview dans Migros Magazine ont été réutilisés dans la version allemande, pour un article assez différent sur les blogs. Devrais-je m'offusquer qu'on ne m'ait pas demandé mon autorisation?

Last month, an interview of me was published in the French-speaking Migros Magazine, under the title Born to Blog. It was a pretty good article, and I was happy with the photograph.

This morning, I noticed an incoming referer from the German edition of the same magazine: Wie Blogger den Tsunami-Opfern Halfen, with my photograph. If my German isn’t too rusty, this means “How Bloggers Helped Tsunami OrphansVictims“.

Well, at first, I bypassed the title and started reading the text, assuming it must be a translation of my initial interview. Not so. The first and last paragraph have something to do with me, but the middle of this small article is about something I don’t even know about.

Exploring a little more by looking at the PDF version of the article, I understood that it was in fact part of a larger enquiry on blogs.

Right, so they re-used part of the interview I did in December, and the photograph to illustrate it. It’s nice to be in the German-language press, of course, but I can’t help thinking they should at least have asked me before re-using the interview and the photograph.

I was in for a bit more surprise when I tried to see where the article was linked from on the main page of the site. Here is what I saw. (Screenshots coming later.)

Now, I’ll agree that my photo is a good one (my thanks to the photographer for her patience, by the way), and that I have a slight tendancy to think others try to take advantage of me all the time, but it does strike me as a little strange that my photograph is used to illustrate the link to the other article in the enquiry. Try clicking around, you’ll see what I mean.

Should I be unhappy about this, or do you just give up any hope of what your words or image are used for once you start dealing with the press?

As an aside, a three-part interview of me will be aired on the RSR1 radio next week. More details about that in a later post.

Update 11.02.2005: after writing this post, I also sent an e-mail to the journalist who interviewed me. He called me straight away to apologize. Neither he nor his boss knew about the German article, so they were also a little annoyed. This was clearly an internal communication problem, and from what I understand it wasn’t the first time.

He assured me that even though the photo could in theory be re-used, it shouldn’t be taken out of its context. The present case was a bit on the limit, he admitted — the article was about blogging, but from a whole other angle. I suggested they get the web people to put in links between the two parts of the enquiry on weblogs.

Update 01.06.2005: photographer’s name removed at her request.

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