Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the best newspaper of them all?
Now don't be misled by the question, it's not the Daily Mirror.
On Monday, it was the Times - which gleefully carried a "Newspaper of the Year" tag just under its masthead, as it had done daily for the previous 12 months.
But that changed last night at the annual British Press Awards - the, forgive the overused analogy, Oscars of the newspaper industry - when the crown was passed to the Daily Telegraph. (The Times can at least console itself with having Caitlin Moran being named columnist of the year.)
The paper carries a report of its award on p2, though it wasn't sufficiently ready for the accolade to have the title ready to slap on its front page. Expect to see it tomorrow.
But where does all this leave the Daily Express. While the paper failed to hoover up any of the major awards at last night's do, it is not about to drop its claim to be "The World's Greatest Newspaper".
Paper Monitor has never found out which august body actually bestowed this honour on the paper. In the finest tradition of Fleet Street, it seems it must be attributed to "unnamed sources".