I Have a Bone to Pick With Verve!

I interviewed a freelance fashion writer from Verve Social Magazine for a short fashion article I wrote for my magazine class. I usually read her articles only, but for this post I want to explore a bit. Before I get to my rant, I want to critique their home page very badly! There are two photos of a tweet button displayed next to each other. There is also a slideshow that displays other running stories, but with the tweet photo yet again displayed another two times making it the dominant story. I get it, its a weekly story, but I don't need to see the pictures over and over again with the same titles, and the only difference are the dates.

Speaking of dates. There are no dates on this mans article! I know magazine's are supposed to be timeless, but I'd like to know when this was published. I just realized that this article is a fashion article. The picture displayed with the piece on the home page was a painting with an eye on it. I guess the web designer or who ever chose it thought it would go with the article because it is named, "Inside The Designers Eye: The Creator Nicholas Velez." People like me, who stop reading the blurb beyond the first error, missed the connection. His comma is outside of the quotation mark. That rule goes back to high school English.

Something that burst my bubble: "Right now you are probably wondering who is Nicholas Velez, well he is the late friend of Felix and Jesus, as well as cousin of Rico all young men of Dominican origin who shared the same vision." You know, I am curious who is Nicholas Velez, but now I want to know who Felix, Jesus and Rico are. I'm so confused! When a viewer stumbles upon your article, you can't automatically assume your reader knows who or what you are talking about! Tell me what's going on even if you have talked about it previously in a separate article! And what is up with this magazine being on a first name basis?

After the quote above, the writer continued, "This vision they shared two years in the making in fashion, they were all hanging out one day when they decided that there was a void in the men's fashion world that needed to be filled." It's already obvious the vision they shared was fashion, so that didn't need to be said. The writer should have ended his sentence at fashion, and began a new one at they. Don't even get me started on "men's."

At the end of the page, the writer's Facebook looking picture is displayed and next to the image is his first name, "jonathan." His first name is not capitalized, and I would love to know his last name. Stories are more credible with last names! The writer has a Wikipedia page...That's it. I'm finished writing.