Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Paper Monitor feels rather like we're in a period of crossover - rather similar to the situation between the Neanderthals and the first Homo sapiens sapiens.
Neanderthals disappeared, but there was an intriguing crossover period.
Many feel the old media has had its chips but it still seems remarkably robust and its tactics have remarkable effects when translated into new media.
Page 33 of is a case in point. It features the story of Samantha Brick, a 41-year-old television producer.
It's a rather bizarre piece where a woman bemoans the fact that her beauty leads other women to be very unpleasant to her. So far, so old media.
If this piece was running in 1992, instead of 2012, the average reader might have showed it to his or her mate and discussed it. That would have been it. It takes a bit of effort to chop up a bit of a newspaper and take it to the pub.
Today it has generated a Twitter storm. "Samantha Brick" is trending on Twitter worldwide with, by the estimate of social search engine Topsy, about 2,500 tweets an hour about her (as of 15:30 BST).
The tweets are almost universally making fun of poor Ms Brick. They point out that she is actually not stunningly beautiful. In very sarcastic terms.
The reaction is .
Old media co-exists with new media.