Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Journalism has changed a lot since the Daily Universal Register - later the Times - made its debut in January 1785.
One institution would have been absent from its pages - the "survey" press release put out by a company in the knowledge that hungry journalists will lap up this free advertising. Especially over summer, when news is in abeyance.
The Daily Mail runs a classic today with "Why brunettes have more fun (on pay day)".
It explains that natural browns and the dyed earn £4,250 a year more than their blonde confreres.
It carries pithy, newsy sentences like: "A further 20 per cent said that a dye job made them feel happier and more confident with their appearance."
And who could be behind this earth-shattering news? Err, it's a firm of hair colourists.
Of course, there may be some who feel that even the Times occasionally fails to keep to the Daily Universal Register's mission statement: "Nothing shall ever find a place in the Universal Register, that can tend to wound the ear of delicacy, or corrupt the heart."
There are some who might feel that appearances in its pages by the glamour model/author Katie Price (nee Price, re-nee Jordan, re-re-nee Price) break that covenant. But it must be said that today's Times has Ms Price attacking the snobbery of a polo event in most reasonable language and with clothes firmly on.
On the other hand, the Daily Mail has a number of female golfers in bikinis all over its page three to go with the brunette revelations.
Ah, the news gulf.