Paper Monitor
09:21 UK time, Friday, 20 August 2010
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
It's A-level results day! An occasion of unconfined joy for triumphant pupils, proud parents and, of course, newspaper picture editors alike.
All the ingredients for the optimum Fleet Street image are there. Girls, most likely middle-class, preferably blonde, smiling, hugging and, ideally, jumping in the air, while wearing vest tops. Perhaps only photographic evidence of Princess Diana rising from the dead to form a Supremes-style girl band with Cheryl Cole and Elizabeth Hurley could tick more boxes, and even that would be a close-run thing.
It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of this event to newspapers, falling as it does amid the barren wastelands of the August silly season. It's little wonder that media executives anticipate it in much the same way that wide-eyed children look forward to Christmas.
Still, the regularity with which the event is covered has become something of a cliche, and Paper Monitor's own knowing asides on the phenomenon will be familiar to regular readers.
A blog titled has been set up to quantify the trend, and Thursday's Newsnight, in a wry attempt to redress the balance, concluded with a - yes boys sit A-levels too - receiving their results.
As a result, it is perhaps no surprise that the newspapers are comparatively restrained this year. Only one has celebrating girls on its front page - that being, of course, the Daily Telegraph, a title which has always had a soft spot for academically successful young women.
That said, on their inside pages the papers are carrying on as usual, with the unprecedented competition for university places meaning that the level of coverage is, for once, almost balanced by its newsworthiness.
Indeed, the Daily Mail has perhaps the ultimate A-levels story - two successive Miss Newcastles, pictured with tiaras and gowns, who received their results on the same day.
The Sun has two-thirds of a page showing three young ladies looking at their results and smiling. The Express has "Emma, Izzy, Anna, Jess and Katie" arranged in a semi-circle and cheering. And the Guardian's Jessica Sheppard speaks to five case studies about their results - the three girls' quotes are accompanied by headshots, while the two boys' remarks go unillustrated.
Daringly breaking all the rules is the Independent, whose main A-levels image is of 18-year-old Ben Scheffer, who received three As and three A*s but does not have a single university offer... or crop top. The Times, perhaps to demonstrate that its paywall will not drive it downmarket in the race for hits, has a four-column picture of three happy young men.
Such editorial choices clearly state: Come on, then, wiseacre. We defy you to say something knowing about this.
Paper Monitor is too impressed with the chutzpah even to try.
The 
