Paper Monitor
11:08 UK time, Tuesday, 28 August 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
A momentous occasion in the calendar this - the 1,000 entry in the new-style, blog-friendly Monitor. Unfortunately, Her Majesty's Press fails to reciprocate with a similarly significant clutch of stories.
Kids are still roaming the streets as those endless summer holidays stretch on into a childcare-induced parental nervous breakdown, but in Newspaper Land the Tuesday after the August bank holiday has a definite "back to school" vibe. Here endeth the Silly Season, in name at least – the point being that editors these days don't need to shoehorn frivolity into the summer months.
The only fly in the ointment of this theory is that there's very little serious news doing the rounds.
The Daily Mail does its best to make a good fist of things, by simply summoning the news from 10 years ago – when Princess Diana died – and rerunning its coverage.
Such a stunt requires a little dressing up if punters aren't simply to ask themselves "Why am I stumping up 45p of my hard-earned cash for a four-page cuttings job?" Hence: "To mark the 10th anniversary of Diana's death, the Mail is reprinting its compelling coverage of those historic days."
By reproducing the front page of its 2 September 1997 edition, the whole thing rather has the feel of a pull-out… until, four pages in, you get to "Cuckoos and hedgehogs on the at-risk list" and you are plunged right back into the late August 2007 news drought.
Oh well, back to those pictures of elaborately attired and smiley carnival dancers that seem to sum up the Notting Hill Carnival for most picture editors… and not a hint of the caned masses who, as any seasoned carnival-goer will tell you, are by far the most common sight of the August bank holiday in London W11.
The 
