Paper Monitor
10:53 UK time, Tuesday, 17 July 2007
It's a day for personality profiling by headline (ie can you guess the paper from the story on the front page).
RISE OF THE £250,000 GP (Clue: It's a mix of social climbing and social envy, with a touch of wasteful public services - yes it's the Daily Mail.)
Just another day in Iraq - 100 more fathers, mothers, sons and daughters killed (Clue: It's a mix of death, maladministration and finger-pointing - yes, it's the Indy.)
VALUE OF HOUSES IS GOING UP £50 A DAY (Clue: House price inflation is a good thing since its readers already have 1930s semis - yes it's the Diana Express)
WHO DARES IS BINNED (Clue: Oooh oooh oooh! A story about the SAS!!! Phwoar!!! yes it's the Sun)
Boris rides in to challenge Livingstone PLUS "Everything you need to know about champagne" - (Clue: You don't need a clue, it has to be the Telegraph.)
Incidentally on the subject of the author of some of the Magazine's best Quotes of the Day, why is it that only one of today's papers picks up on a word used in Boris Johnson's launch manifesto - "Almost every day I go for a run down the bemerded pavements of North London."
The Guardian alone does its homework, saying the word doesn't appear in the Oxford English Dictionary but "seems to originate from a translation of Rabelais ("My foule Nockandrow, all bemerded in shiting") and a play by occult writer Aleister Crowley". Boris, is that wise company to be keeping?
The Daily Mail veers into uncomfortable territory by giving half a page to pictures of the German woman who was held an underground prisoner for years but who is now finding her way in freedom. Freedom to do things like go to night clubs and dance with friends and even to be kissed on the cheek by a friend. Perhaps even a boyfriend. But of course the price of that freedom is that someone somewhere will be looking at pictures of the kiss while they're bored on their commute.
Paper Monitor wonders if Mr Murdoch (currently negotiating to buy the Wall Street Journal) would be happy with the Times advertising Facebook on the front page. It's only a few weeks since Mr Murdoch was asked if he thought newspapers had a future when young people were all going to MySpace, which he owns, to which he reportedly replied. "I wish they were... They're all going to Facebook at the moment."
How will the big man take the Times's plug? And will he be joining Paper Monitor's ?
Most worrying of all though is another Times story which goes thus: "Breakfast is back, with a calorific vengeance. After the fads of microwaveable porridge or the skinny latte from Starbucks with a low fat muffin, now is the era of the on-the-hop drive-thru, free-range Egg and Sausage McMuffin... with cheese."
Let's get a few things straight. Porridge is never a fad, even from a microwave, and its era is NOT OVER. This story relates only to McDonalds sale figures in the US. For those of us this side of the Atlantic (and for those of us who are that side of the Atlantic but like their imperceptible witticisms to come from this side of the Atlantic), it's breakfast as normal. anyone?
The 
