Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Has anyone looked at the Daily Telegraph's front page recently? Talk about putting it out there. It has managed to squeeze on five stories - three of which have plugs for online content on them, plus [pause for breath] eight pictures, one large strapline, five promotional ads for feautres inside the paper - one of which includes a picture of legs that go all the way up to here - the FTSE and Dow Jones rates and one cartoon. The page is so busy it hurt Papaer Monitor's eyes. Has anyone told the paper that less is more? Obviously not.
The Daily Express works to such a mantra. Diana and/or Madeleine - that's its front page done and dusted for the next year or so. In fact, it's much of the inside put to bed as well. Today it devotes pages two, three, four and five to Madeleine. Keeping up the momentum will not be hard for a paper that has managed to get Diana onto at least one front page every week for what seems like the whole 10 years since she died.
Other than Madeleine, the only other face to get into every newspaper is that of Sybil - Downing Street's first cat for a decade. She makes it onto the front page of the Telegraph, but what doesn't, quite frankly. In the Independent she gets most of page five. For a nation of supposed animal lovers, this level of importance is entirely appropriate.
Talking of the Independent, is it trying to get us all sacked? With social networking sites being banned almost daily by more and more companies, part five of its how-to-master-your-pc-in-seven-days course is on, you've guessed it, social networking. But can you be sacked for just reading about how to do it?