Paper Monitor
10:47 UK time, Wednesday, 18 May 2011
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Page three is a curious institution.
Not the bare-breasted page three of the Sun and the Star, but the fact that newspapers usually reserve their third page for something a little lighter, a little fluffier, a little more colourful.
In the Daily Mirror there's a classic example. They go big on picture of Paula Abdul and Cheryl Cole at an X Factor USA launch event, wearing dresses of a similar shade of red.
Page three is a bit soft because, in tabloids particularly, page two is a dose of hard news.
The Daily Mail also has Abdul and Cole. The Mail has its own version of the page three formula, as they often choose to run a wacky survey story as the anchor. Today's links increasing sales of biscuits to economically straitened times.
The Daily Express goes with the stories about Arnold Schwarzenegger's private life.
Some newspapers resist. The Financial Times doesn't know the meaning of the word fluffy. And the Times, offering page two to the leader writers, is therefore often minded to have something serious on page three.
The Daily Telegraph's choice is rather odd today. It's a story about a landlord in dispute with some departing tenants, who has chosen to blockade their property with skips in order to stop them moving out. It's real local paper stuff.
But it's not the kind of thing a local paper would reserve for page three.
In local rags, the space is often dominated by birds' nests appearing in unusual places, animals that think they are other animals, children doing precocious things and other frippery.
Ah, happy days.
The 
