Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Today we take a look at the way newspapers trumpet their content.
Paper Monitor has previously drawn attention to the legend "THE WORLD'S GREATEST NEWSPAPER" which appears on the masthead of the Daily Express.
It has never been possible to establish precisely which body accorded this title, or whether it was simply a de facto recognition of the Express's towering status worldwide.
But Paper Monitor's eye is caught by a slightly more modest title on another newspaper's front page today.
In the blurb (the coloured promotional strip beneath the masthead) on the Independent, there is a reference to "THE UNRIVALLED Life PULL-OUT SECTION".
One has to confess that one is not sure whether the word "unrivalled" means without any rivals, or the winner of a struggle between rivals. But Paper Monitor can't help but feel that the Guardian's G2 is a rival.
Indeed, only yesterday G2 was trumpeting its "unrivalled" status. As Harry Hill says: "Fight!"
Anyway, the Indy's Life is marking an anniversary that you are not going to find in your redtops - 40 years since the publication of The Female Eunuch.
The blurb features a picture of the 28-year-old Alice Jones, who will be reading the 40-year-old feminist classic for the first time.
Elsewhere there is fodder for Indyites with a paean to the River Café's Rose Gray, and a review of range cookers that features one with a price tag of £8,840.
Lordy.
And the Indy carries an intriguing claim - that Michael Foot effectively coined the slogan "Dig for Victory".
Paper Monitor can't immediately substantiate this, but can any of our readers? Crowd-source away.
Comment number 1.
At 5th Mar 2010, Megan wrote:A hunt through Cabinet Papers in the National Archives suggests the phrase 'Dig for Victory' came from the Ministry of Agriculture shortly before a Ministry of Food was set up in the autumn of 1939, with a fellow call Morrison at the helm. He made a bit of a hash in introducing rationing in January 1940 & was replaced by Lord Woolton (after whom the pie was named) in April of that year. The Ministry of Food appropriated the slogan and used it, and variations thereof, throughout WW2.
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