Tuesdays are usually reserved for paid members, but today’s newsletter is free! In this issue: the woman behind The Washington Sun’s splashy marketing campaign, which helped introduce one of the most notable newspaper launches in recent memory; the scoop on a former NPR Music reporter’s new documentary; and more media intel in Seen and Heard. Plus, another reader hot take in this week’s I Said What I Said.

xoxo,

Stephanie

One piece of advice I kept hearing from people before starting La Fronde was not to be so focused on the branding of it all. “Honey, you’re worrying too much. No one cares about how the thing will look, just write good stories and people will read La Frog,” reassured my 75-year-old dad, who misheard the name of my new project when I first broke the news. I then had to be the glorified Duolingo instructor giving a cigar-smoking Southern unc a crash course in French.

To me, how La Fronde looked to the world was part of the story. I had a pretty clear concept in mind when I went to Jenna Kendle to bring the vision to life, and without her, this newsletter wouldn’t be what it is now. She’d go on to create the design and marketing for one of the most anticipated newspaper launches in recent memory: The Washington Sun, formerly known as NOTUS. 

Jenna helped create its new visual identity and a splashy promotional rollout that included a branded truck driving around town and cheekily parking in front of The Washington Post. The launch itself didn’t exactly come together without a hitch. NOTUS was supposed to rebrand as The Star, but a federal judge blocked the paper from moving forward with the name, forcing it back to the drawing board. They eventually landed on The Washington Sun.

I caught up with Jenna, a design director at ad agency Avōq, about the smart design and marketing strategy behind The Sun’s launch, and what anyone starting their own project can learn from it.

Congratulations on the launch! How did the whole concept come together?

This was a super unique project, because a lot of our clients come to us totally new. They don’t have a lot of preconceived notions about what their brand should look like. So it was interesting evolving the NOTUS brand into something new and exciting for D.C., versus a complete rebrand where you change all the colors and everything. We knew we wanted to stay within the yellow-and-black color palette, which was helpful — and it worked out well that they became the Sun, so the yellow totally worked.

A lot of our art direction was about how you modernize a reputable, established news outlet for the digital age and for a new generation coming up. So we have this halftone dot effect throughout a lot of the creative, meant to be reminiscent of an LED screen, but also of actual newsprint halftone dots, without being too on the nose. That’s a little “aha” that designers pick up on.

Leaning on my background in print journalism was exciting — we built in little nods to print journalism in several ways. We have a mobile truck running around the city right now with different headlines, meant to evoke that print-news look even though it’s a digital screen driving around the city.

Tell me about the truck! I’ve seen it in a few places.

It was really nice to work with a client who wanted to push and invest in the brand, and invest in the city of D.C. itself. I’m excited about the content of the paper and about bringing national-level news into a more local context, which is something D.C. has been missing. 

We really wanted to showcase things around the city that add to the daily life of the people who live here, one of those being the mobile news headline truck. We loved the idea of sharing the news where there’s no paywall — it’s a billboard truck driving around the city.

Someone told me yesterday, which was really poignant, that they were eating lunch and looked out and saw the truck come through. We cycle three or four headlines on it every day. There was an unhoused person standing there reading every single headline, and I liked the accessibility of that. That’s what we lose when we don’t have print papers everywhere — we lose accessibility for everyone. So it’s nice that NOTUS and The Washington Sun want to give back to their community in different ways. 

With the Sun name, did you have any part in coming up with it? And once you had it, how did you think about how it would translate visually to people?

The Sun name was an internal NOTUS name — they came to us with it. When we heard it, we were excited about the opportunities it opened up. Without getting too punny, the sun is shining a new light. There was a lot of visual opportunity to bring in sun and shining motifs, and to lean into transparency. It basically wrote the art direction for us.

When I’ve spoken to Washington Sun reporters, they’ve said the same thing — that this is an opportunity for the sun to shine on D.C. alongside the national coverage they’ll always have. The reporters are excited about it too.

When it comes to a publication or brand having good taste, what does that mean to you?

Hard question. It’s so subjective. Sometimes we don’t agree with our clients’ taste; it’s just different from our own. But we still take pride in the work, and it’s an art form to collaborate in a way that makes both the artist and the client happy.

This one was pretty easy, because our taste and style significantly matched what the client was thinking, so it’s nice when that works out. There is such a thing as bad design and such a thing as good design. That’s the gray area we wade through with clients — sometimes we lose the battles. But in general, it’s about massaging the work, not in a manipulative way, so it makes the client happy while still being something we’re proud of and want to put into the world.

We back it up with data too. We do a lot of user testing, so it’s nice to have hard data to fall back on. But at the end of the day, it’s all subjective, and we use our expertise to learn the rules and then learn how to break them in a way that makes cool art that’s still functional. If art isn’t functional, it isn’t good design.

You mentioned there’s such a thing as bad design. Without naming names, what are some unforced errors you’ve seen from other media companies where you think, “If you’d just work with me, I’d help you tweak this”?

We’re seeing it so much right now with AI — the AI slop is so real. No one taught AI the basic principles of design; it’s just going off what’s already out there, so you see a lot of utter crap. That’s frustrating. It’s people cutting corners, not wanting to pay designers.

We also see it with people who have access to Canva but not the same training. What really hurts is poor hierarchy or legibility — things that disrupt accessibility. If someone can’t read a sign because the text is illegible, or there’s red text on a black background that people with color blindness or other vision differences can’t read, that makes me angry, because I think it’s discriminatory.

I also get upset with the wrong hierarchy of information — brands that hide the fine print or the real message. I see that as misleading, which probably comes from my journalism background of valuing transparency and clarity, and not wanting to insult your reader. When I see design used in a way that feels weaponized, I really dislike that.

When the name changed from the Star to the Sun, how did that reshape the creative direction, and what was your gut reaction in the moment?

There was definitely a little “oh shit” moment, but I’d compare it most to a breaking-news day in journalism. You work so hard on an A1 page, you’re excited about a feature or project, and then breaking news hits and you have to pivot. It felt ironically journalistic to me — pivoting that fast felt totally normal.

We wanted to run at it and create something immediately, but that pause and reset gave us the chance to look at things in a totally new light. You don’t get to revisit your work a lot in this industry, so that was a really interesting exercise, and we think it made the work even better afterward. We were able to get sunrise motifs into the launch video, and it all worked out well.

It’s all been a pretty fast turnaround, and I think because we liked where we were, we were able to evolve the brand pretty well from the original. So it wasn’t too big a pivot — the strategy, the concept, the actual nuts and bolts underneath the fluff were still there.

When landing on the final design, how were you able to avoid making it feel like The Washington Post or another local outlet?

Knowing the Post’s brand as well as I did from working there, it was nice to know what they would do and then set that aside and do something different. That insight, plus The Washington Sun’s own voice, helped us make it feel like its own thing.

Their newsletters are cheeky, very blunt, like you’re talking to your best friend. There’s a funny quality that says, “We know news is intense and hard and a lot of things happening in the world absolutely suck, but we’re together as humans.” That human connection makes The Washington Sun unique: a little cheeky, a little playful, but still informative and rooted in trustworthy journalism.

For anyone thinking about starting their own thing without the kind of budget The Washington Sun had, what tips would you offer on the identity and visuals?

Keep it simple. A lot of people think it needs to be loud and artistic and make a splash, but especially starting out, keeping it black and white with pops of color — stripped down while you find your voice — is good.

Go back to accessibility and hierarchy: legibility beats artistry every time. If you want more people to read it, you need to let people actually read it. There are also free tools out there (Figma has a free option), so look around, get inspiration, decide where to spend your energy, but keep it simple at first.

Scoop: Sidney Madden, a freelance journalist and former NPR music reporter, is set to debut her short film, 'And Counting,' which explores why so many Black women are struggling with unemployment right now. According to the latest federal jobs report, about 610,000 Black women are unemployed, with an unemployment rate of 5.6% — well above the national rate of 4.1%.

For the documentary, Sidney spoke with Black women who've been laid off in the last year, including Teen Vogue's former culture editor Kaitlyn McNab, about dealing with financial instability, the stigma of unemployment and the pressure to take the entrepreneurial route when they've felt squeezed out of the job market.

For all the La Fronde readers in NYC, you can catch the premiere of 'And Counting' on Sept. 17 at BRIC. For now, that's the only place where you'll get to see 'And Counting,' but Sidney hopes to secure enough funding to release a longer version of her film. I caught up with her about how the whole documentary came together and what she learned while making it.

How did the whole film come together?

It's one of those things that was a very understated stat that used to just whiz by on news programs, or maybe someone's timeline. As the year went on — and this is a stat that affects me as a Black woman — I noticed [the number of unemployed Black women] grew, and it became this convoluted talking point for politicians — ‘This is a canary in the coal mine’ — and turned into verbiage and jargon. So what I wanted to do with the documentary is make it a communal conversation and connect this number to the real people living it every day.

The four people featured in the documentary are cross-generational Black women who worked in different sectors — the federal government, marketing, media and education — and were all dismissed from their jobs or laid off in 2025. What I'm trying to do is take that story from the sideline, from a statistic to a lived human experience that respects the Black women going through it.

When you were talking with the women in the documentary, what was the most surprising throughline you heard between their stories?

One thing that came up again and again was the emotional and mental toll — realizing, in retrospect, how burnt out they'd been, how much of their energy had gone into office politics and second-guessing themselves, and then, once they were out of the office, how much healthier they felt.

So there's relief, in a sense, but also a lot of scarcity and instability, because you don't know where your paycheck is coming from after severance and unemployment run out.

There was also this lesson of removing shame around being unemployed or underemployed and realizing you're not alone in the process. Because yes, it's business, it's capitalism, but it can feel very personal when you're laid off. You think, “Does this have to do with my gender and race?” And then you compound that with seeing some of your former colleagues get jobs right away while you're still struggling, even though you're just as qualified.

I've also heard a lot of Black women going the entrepreneurial route because of how brutal the job market has been.

That's another big point. A lot of the women talked about being forced into entrepreneurship. One of the women I spoke with, Kaitlyn [McNab], said that she's been full-time freelance since the [Teen Vogue] layoffs, and everyone is telling her to relax and take a trip. And she's like, "Girl, with what money? I'm chasing $13,000 worth of unpaid invoices right now.”

The idea that if you get laid off you should just "start your own thing" — people mean it as motivation, as a silver lining, but for a lot of women it actually compounds the stress, because you're being pushed into something you might not even want to do.

Have a tip for me? Send it to stephanie@la-fronde.com or my Signal if you want to keep things confidential (itsstephwill.94).

Punting the apology. Just when you thought all the hype around women’s sports was a small step forward in this weird little world we’re all living in, it’s shit like this that makes you realize: it’s still the same old patriarchy, just in a different font.

By now, you’ve probably seen the clip of ESPN reporter Holly Rowe being disrespected by coach Steve Sarkisian on live TV during the Texas Longhorns and Ohio State game on Saturday. As Rowe tried to start her post-game interview, Sarkisian yelled, “Texas Fight. Hook ’em,” over her before abruptly walking away.

Adding insult to injury, Arch Manning (whose name I can’t say in my house without my cat, Archie, thinking I’m calling him for food) laughed during a post-game press conference about watching an AI video of Sarkisian slapping Rowe in the face, which triggered a chorus of laughs from the press pit. Manning later apologized for the incident and, according to Rowe, reached out to her personally. A real sad state of the world when a 22-year-old college kid has more integrity than the much older men who’ve been cracking jokes about the whole thing.

Just as frustrating to me, besides what Sarkisian and Manning did, is that not one person stuck up for Rowe during either of these moments (in fact, they actively put her down). After Sarkisian walked away from the live broadcast, one commentator tried to justify his shitty behavior: “Uh, he wants to go celebrate and you can understand why.” The difference is, he was already set up and prepped for the interview — the man was already live on camera talking into the microphone. He could have spent the one minute he seemingly promised to just do the interview. And, in typical ESPN fashion, the network didn’t put out any statement defending Rowe.

One step forward, two steps back. I had no idea the Emmys were even supposed to be on yesterday until I saw a flood of red carpet pictures on my social feed. Alas, since the broadcast was on NBC and they hold the key to Sunday Night Football, the ceremony was punted to a weird Monday night slot.

Rhea Seehorn was fantastic in ‘Pluribus’ and I’m glad she finally got her flowers at the Emmys this time around. What is messed up is that no actors of color won any of the 12 lead or supporting acting awards, and that historic record of five Black women earning directing nominations culminated with none of them taking home an award, either.

Welcome to I Said What I Said, where the members of our lovely La Fronde community share their hottest media takes. Got a take of your own? Email [email protected].

It points to a bigger trend I've noticed in media job postings lately: everyone wants a multi-hyphenate who can basically do the work of five people. That really started accelerating after COVID (you can read the whole deep dive I did about how media jobs have changed over the last decade), and it's only gotten worse as layoffs have become more common.

The whole "be on camera" thing feels like a necessary evil now. But making videos also isn't some breezy responsibility you can tack onto a job description and treat like another box to check off a to-do list. That’s the part a lot of management glosses over. But curious what the La Fronde world thinks! If you’ve got a strong take on this, shout in the comments (a friendly reminder that commenting privileges are for paid members only).