Paper Monitor
11:48 UK time, Friday, 16 January 2009
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Those who regularly knock on Paper Monitor's door will know of the concept of the - a serendipitous confluence of events that fall into the lap of waiting news editors.
Step up to the podium the Airbus in the Hudson story. Let's just spend a moment or two unpicking the remarkable elements of this story that combine to make it so much more than the sum of its parts.
- The heroic pilot, guiding his stalled but fully-laden passenger jet through the skyscrapers of New York
- Said pilot has the best pilot's name ever: Captain Chesley B "Sully" Sullenberger the Third
- IT'S NEW YORK! for goodness' sake
- A city so cool even its mayor is an experienced pilot, able to comment knowledgeably on the drama
- Everyone gets out alive and largely unhurt
- There's the money shot - a picture of the plane in the water, with the city's buildings as a back-drop and passengers huddled on the wings
- The timing - well within the comfort zone for morning paper deadline, but significantly after most people have left their internet-news enabled work stations for the day
Returning to that photo for a moment, the Times notes that it was circulated round the globe after citizen snapper Janis Krums took it on his (yes, you read it right the first time, that's a man called Janis) iPhone and uploaded it to Twitter. There was so much interest, Twitter crashed under the weight of traffic.
What's more, Mr Krums (why don't British people ever have names like this?) wrote on his only last Saturday how one of his new year's resolutions was to "have over 1,000 followers on Twitter".
Now that's one he can tick off the to-do list a little earlier than expected.
But there is one paper untroubled by such goings-on, perhaps because everyone involved was too sensibly dressed, it being mid-winter in New York. Yes, it's the Daily Sport - bought, as promised, for Lembit Opik's new political column.
But first, an observation - my, what a lot of boobs. There is a Page Three Girl, of course - Jamie Leigh, 19, 34F-24,32, from Colchester. A Front Page Girl. A Weather Girl. A Porn Girl in an article on jobs that will weather the credit crunch. A "Bonus Babe" on page nine. And not one but two topless chicks to illustrate Lembit's musings, a pair of cheeky girls named Gemma and Ashlea Massey, who the LibDem MP proposes sending out on Segways to "spread happiness in a 23-mile range without a recharge".
In fact, it would be quicker to list the pages that don't have any bared bosoms. Four and five. Six. And some, but not all, pages in the Sport section.
Back to Lembit's column. Clearly written before the plane ditched into the Hudson, he bangs on about "Bolshy" Boris Johnson's idea to build a new airport in the middle of the Thames, and what might happen when sea levels rise. "At least that would make it worth listening to the life vest briefing."
Lembit, Paper Monitor will be listening very carefully indeed next time it takes to the air. Preferably with Captain Chesley B "Sully" Sullenberger III at the helm.
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