Paper Monitor
11:23 UK time, Tuesday, 28 August 2012
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Silly season analysis: Day II
August is, typically, the newspapers' silly season. The August bank holiday represents the month's high water mark of silliness.
In 2011, otherwise under-employed reporters found themselves pursuing reports of great white sharks in Cornwall.
Some 12 months on the hunt is on for a different creature on the other side of southern England.
Reports late on Sunday of a lion having been sighted at a caravan site near Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, led the Daily Mail to splash the story in some editions.
By Monday morning, Fleet Street's finest were en route to the Clacton area in search of big game.
Unsurprisingly, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Star both despatched reporters in full khaki hunting gear to conduct their inquiries.
The Times approached the story in a similar fashion, sending Ruth Maclean, who grew up on the edge of the Serengeti in Tanzania, to look for the big cat. It was a difficult task, "Essex at this time of year is exactly the colour of lions and there are dozens of handy haystacks to hide behind."
Amed police were deployed, two helicopters were scrambled and experts from Colchester Zoo were frantically consulted. Eventually, officers concluded that the creature was probably "either a large domestic cat or a wildcat".
Today's newsapers attempt to identify the culprit, but come to different conclusions.
According to the Daily Mirror, the feline is in fact The Daily Mail, however, pinpoints
The Sun, however, is rather more credulous about the initial report.
"I am convinced I heard the lion roar as I walked the streets of St Osyth hours after the sighting," writes "and it was terrifying."
In one title, at least, the story did not end with a whimper.
The 
