Editor's blog - SubScribe

The Mail and Stephen Sutton: credit where it's due

26/4/2014

Mail 26-04-14

Mail, 24-04-14

The Mail takes a lot of flak for a variety of perceived sins, so it is only fair that we acknowledge the paper when it is a force for public good.
This morning's splash is about a young man called Stephen Sutton, who is dying of bowel cancer. Sutton is only 19 and when he learnt his fate in 2012 he made a bucket list. At the top was "raise £10,000 for Teenage Charity Trust".
On Wednesday morning he learnt that his campaign had raised not £10,000 but £1 million.
Today the total stands at more than £2.5m.
The Mail describes Sutton as "The boy who's inspired Britain" and beneath the headline is a subdeck that says
"Dying cancer teenager's charity appeal hits £2.5m after Mail talks of his courage".
The copy explains:

"Just days ago Stephen Sutton bravely told the world he was on the brink of death, and thanked well-wishers for helping him raise more than £1 million for charity.
But the teenage cancer patient's online message of farewell was only the beginning. It has sparked one of the most extraordinary fundraising drives the country has ever seen.
In the 72 hours since his story was featured in the Daily Mail, donations have poured in at an astonishing rate of more than £400,000 a day."

Bravo!
It is true that donations accelerated after the Press coverage on Thursday.
But it's worth pointing out that sports stars and celebrities have been involved in his campaign from the word go and that tweets this week from the like of Jason Manford, John Bishop, Louis Tomlinson and Shaun Keaveney might have had some impact.
It's also worth mentioning that the Mail was not alone in running the story on Thursday. Below are some rather scruffy cuttings from other papers that day. Two of them, unlike the Mail, also give the link to Sutton's justgiving page. If you click, you'll see that the total is now standing at £2,650,000.

sutton cuttings

OK, it hardly needs saying, but how can I not?
How tawdry must you be to try to muscle in and steal the limelight from a dying teenager?
The Mail's Sunday sister, on the other hand, has every right to boast about increasing charitable donations. Its story about food banks - which was definitely an exclusive - has added tens of thousands to the Trussell Trust's fund. It's "Let's crack hunger appeal" now stands at about £75,000.
Wonder if the MoS will be crowing about this tomorrow.

Redtops on a roll: more good heads from the Mirror

24/4/2014

SubScribe is not a fan of puns. Well, not puns that you've seen a thousand times before or are so obvious that they appear everywhere - like Heir's Rock yesterday.
The Mirror today has a succession of headlines that use a play on words; they aren't sophisticated, but by and large, they do work.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge tried their hands at being djs, for example.
The Mail says:"DJ Kate makes the royals a hit in Oz"
The Express: "Kate's great, but Wills is not up to scratch"
The Times: "Kate's a dab hand at the decks, but William is really not up to scratch"
The Sun does much better with "Wills.i.am"
...and then along comes the Mirror with this:

It's in a class of its own. Other efforts today were less imaginative - the elephants who'd overindulged in fermenting fruit elicited the same headline wherever it appeared, but they were still bright and breezy rather than tired and lame and overworked as puns can be.

The Jamaica Inn effort is simple, as is the one about the marooned snorkellers' plea for help - but they work. Happy days all round.

The Sun, Shakespeare and sparkling subs

24/4/2014

Sun 23-04-2014

This morning's Sun was a classic. The front a masterpiece of wit, imagination and good design. The Mirror's front was more run-of-the-mill, heartbreaking as the story was for those close to the man who died because ambulances couldn't park patients in A&E quickly enough.
But inside both papers showed class.

Lear

Henry IV

Hamlet

Henry V

Macbeth

Othello

Romeo and Juliet

Merchant of Venice

Twelfth Night

Midsummer Night's Dream

When it comes to telling a serious story, either of these two much-mocked redtops can put the middleweight middle-class white tops to shame. the news coverage of Manchester United today rightly focused on the leap in the share price first thing yesterday - before the official announcement of the Moyes sacking.

The headlines yesterday morning had been hard, really hard. There was no doubt in anyone's mind (other than the Scotsman's) that this was the day it would end. Had the Press been tipped off? The club insisted not, but Wall Street is investigating. Only the Times of the so-called serious papers took proper note of the business implications.

The Guardian mentioned them in its page 3 essay by Helen Pidd and Hatty Collier. The Telegraph sent the story back to sport and made no mention of the share price in its four pages of coverage. The Mail and Express trod the easy route of digging up Ryan Giggs's past and betting on the successor.

But there was more than the football. There were some fine headings in the Mirror. Pun after pun on page after page can be wearing, unless they are good 'uns. Like "Jamaica Inncoherent" on the sound problems afflicting the BBC's Easter banker. Like "You're neked" on the soldier fined for cruelty after swallowing a fish as part of a Neknominate dare. Like "Con can't take the rap" on the prisoner who broke out of jail to escape loud music.

It did fall for the obvious "Heir's Rock" on Will and Kate's visit to the landmark now known as Uluru. So did the Mail, Express, Telegraph and Star - and everyone also felt obliged to reprint the photograph of Charles and Di at the same spot. Will there ever be an end to this replication of "then and now" pictures as the young royals make their way around the world? I fear we know the answer to that.

From one Will to another. Today is not only St George's Day, but also the 450th anniversary of the birth of Shakespeare.

The Mirror, Mail, Express and Telegraph aren't much interested - although the Telegraph does have a "music is the food of love" heading on the front.

The Times tells us that Easyjet has recruited the Reduced Shakespeare Company to perform the abridged version of the complete works on a flight from London to Verona. The Independent is more concerned with the playwright's death - also on April 23 - than birth, reporting that events are being organised all over the world to mark the 400th anniversary next year. This could be a bit awkward, as he died in 1616, so commemorations would be a shade early.

More interesting, perhaps, is the chap who has been publishing the complete works by tweeting a line every ten minutes since 2009. Willy Shakes, aka, @iam_shakespeare, has 46,500 followers and if you want to catch up, he's up to Antony and Cleopatra.

Masterpiece of the day, however, came from the Sun, with its potted versions of complete works in a tabloid spread, as compiled by managing editor Stig Abell, and Hold Ye Front Page style fronts, as seen down the side of this post.

So while the Times is printing photographs of Katie Price and her daughter to illustrate a story about how the name Ned is growing in popularity and an up-the-skirt shot of a mourner at Gabriel Garcia Marquez's funeral, the Sun is turning to mass education.

And here's a thing. SubScribe realises that it's a little indelicate to ask readers to look up a woman's skirt, but the Guardian seems to have used the same photograph - with a slight difference. After all the ribbing about the Mail's manipulation of the Tim Sherwood salute photograph the other week, it wouldn't have dreamt of adding a little extra black, would it?

times v guardian

Spot the difference: the Times, left, and the Guardian

Back to that other literary great from four centuries ago, SubScribe is indebted to former colleague Ed Maidment for sharing this today:

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare.

If you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare.

If you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise - why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare.

If you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare.

Even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I were dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut, tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens!

But me no buts - it is all one to me. For you are quoting William Shakespeare

Fleet Street is ahead of the game on Moyes

22/4/2014

moyes back pages

moyes puffs

The writing has been on the wall for months. It has been painful to watch the disintegration of David Moyes as he stumbled in Alex Ferguson's shoes like a toddler trying on Mum's high heels.
The parting of the ways finally came at 8.30 this morning when Manchester United tweeted that Moyes had left the club.
For the Press it was just as well: the sacking-to-be was the lead in every sports section and the splash in the Daily Mirror and the Manchester Evening News. Every front page, apart from the Financial Times, had at least a puff.
Besides the splash, the Mirror gave the story a spread on 4-5 plus four pages in sport. There were seven pages in the Mail, five in the Sun, Times and Telegraph, four in the Independent, three in the Guardian, Star and Express and two in the i.
Remember, these reams of newsprint were devoted to a story that hadn't happened.
There was a lot of axeing and a few "the ends". The Sun produced the worst heading of all with its toe-curling non-pun on the front.

There were some good spreads - notably from the Express,top right, and Star - and a nice clean graphic in the Telegraph, below.

Telegraph graphic

Express spread

Scotsman

Overall the coverage was fairly sympathetic. No turnip heads here. But there will be many who look at the papers and wonder at the amount of effort being put into this story in comparison, say, to the Korean ferry disaster.
This is not only football, but also very big business, so who manages Manchester United does matter. But there are far, far more people who don't care about United than do. This was demonstrated on Twitter with tweets showing people how to cut anything to do with Moyes from their streams.
Unfortunately you can't cut off bits of the radio and television broadcasts that you don't want and still see or hear the rest, and plenty were protesting about the amount of time given over to the story on the Today programme and World at One.
And supposing he hadn't been sacked? Well, there was at least one paper - the Scotsman, above - that would have been happier than it probably is today.
For those who are interested in the development of the story, here's Andy Dickinson's rather splendid Storify of the day:

Hurrah! Mirror's Aldridge tells it straight

20/4/2014

mirror spread

Controversial, excitedly, confessed, high-flying, begged

More tabloid hyperbole? No. Quite the reverse. These are the only five words from a thousand or so from Gemma Aldridge that could be said to have even the slightest tinge of journalese about them.

Her splash and spread in today's Sunday Mirror about Josie Cunningham is a text-book example of how to let a story tell itself.

Cunningham wants to be on Big Brother. Negotiations have broken down and she thinks that's because she's 18 weeks pregnant. To her the solution seems simple: have an abortion.

Cunningham says that the baby was fathered either by an escort service "client" or by a Premiership footballer. She was pleased at first:

"I could get free dental work on the NHS, so I got a tooth straightened for cosmetic reasons and it all seemed great.
But then I started to think. I didn't want to be famous for having a footballer's baby or for being the girl who had a kid by someone who paid for sex.
I want to be famous for being me - Josie Cunningham, a glamour model and celebrity in my own right. If I want to do that I need to put my career first.
I want the attention to be on me, not on who fathered my child."

The woman is so delusional and wrong-headed that you just can't stop reading. And Aldridge has pitched it exactly right, allowing Cunningham to condemn herself out of her own mouth (you can hear her on the iPad version pictured above), interrupting the quotes only to point out the law on abortion or to fill in a little background - the main element being that Cunningham apparently had a breast enhancement operation on the NHS. There isn't a "shocking" or "shameless" in sight.

The spread is completed with sidebars from a psychologist, who shows a degree of sympathy, and the columnist Carole Malone, who shows none. She describes Cunningham as "a poster girl for all that's dirty, immoral and sick in our society". The two writers were obviously commissioned to produce 250 words putting a particular side of the argument, but the fact that the Mirror even attempted to find someone to speak up for Cunningham is a breath of fresh air. There are papers that would have given Malone the whole outside column to rant (although I wouldn't bet on her not returning to the subject on her own page in the week).

Many will argue that this is not news. It probably isn't, in that most of us don't know who she is or care what she does. But it is an enlightening - if depressing - snapshot of our society, and SubScribe finds it thoroughly uplifting for the trade of journalism to see it presented so dispassionately.

Read the full article here

Daily Mirror and the giant rat: an apology

15/4/2014

giant rat

The SubScribe mini review of yesterday's papers suggested that the Mirror had stolen the Star's clothes with its splash on a plague of giant rats.
Turns out it hadn't. They were the Ham&High's clothes. The picture used on the front and then again inside with the selfie photographer's face pixillated was said to have been taken in Liverpool. But it was first used in the Ham&High last May. Adrian Whitaker, who took the picture, has complained to the Mirror. It has removed the story from its website, saying it had been deceived.

Time to celebrate the Guardian's journalism

15/4/2014

Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald in New York to collect the Polk award last week

A prophet is honoured but in his own country, Jesus told his disciples. Alan Rusbridger must understand that more than most.

The Guardian has been feted internationally for its coverage of the NSA files leaked by Edward Snowden, but the reaction at home has been churlish.

Last month it was named Newspaper of the Year at the British Press Awards, with the citation:

Its work transcended the parameters of individual category awards because of its ramifications and impact. The judges said the fact that it polarised opinion even within the Press showed how important it was.

It was the view of the judges that it showed courage in producing the most impactful piece of journalism during 2013 with a story of global significance that went to the heart of the debate on press freedom. The unanimous decision of the judges was that the best of British national newspapers in 2013 was The Guardian.

The note that the paper polarised opinion within the Press was a masterpiece of understatement. Few of the NSA stories were followed up by rivals and there was general disdain for the man who leaked them. Here are some of the headlines from other papers:

Snowden leaks could aid paedophiles
Snowden completely abandons girlfriend
Snowden made tech firms wary
Snowden self-regarding idealist
Snowden betrayed his own state
Snowden isn't a hero, he's a traitor

The latter view, which appeared in the Times last month, was echoed by the Express's veteran security correspondent Chapman Pincher, who reported in 1967 that all telegrams were intercepted by GCHQ. Reminiscing on the occasion of his 100th birthday last month, Pincher said: "I think Snowden's a traitor who ought to be shot."

Pincher regards himself as a patriot above all else and was willing to accept instructions from the Government, including publishing disinformation. The Guardian in contrast has found itself in conflict with the Government and even went through the pantomime destruction of hard disks containing Snowden material (as though it wouldn't have ensured that it had back-up copies elsewhere).

As SubScribe wrote last year, the treatment of David Miranda at Heathrow airport was also vengeful and troubling. But instead of highlighting the threat to individual liberties exposed by the episode - apparently 70,000 people a year are stopped under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act - rival papers either ignored the story or put the boot in.

Well now the Guardian has become the first British paper to win a Pulitzer prize - and not just any prize, the top one, for public service. The award, shared with the Washington Post, has gone to Guardian US as it is open only to American-based organisations - but that doesn't lessen its importance to British journalism. After all, most of our nationals have a Washington bureau or New York operation that would qualify.

The citation states that the prize for a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper or news site...a gold medal

"Awarded to the Guardian US for its revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, helping through aggressive reporting to spark a debate about the relationship between the government and the public over issues of security and privacy"

Last week the Guardian team of Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill collected a George Polk award for national security reporting in New York. Greenwald has also been awarded the University of Georgia's McGill medal for journalistic courage, and the paper won the European Press Award Special Prize for "the biggest global story of the year".

Maybe we in this country may now accept that it isn't a good thing for America to be tapping Angela Merkel's phone - and recognise the Guardian's role in bringing to the world's attention the fact that it does.

Congratulations.

SubScribe Greenwald's new venture
SubScribe Miranda's detention

Where is the Telegraph's original journalism?

14/4/2014

Telegraph 14-04-14

What's going on here? This is today's Telegraph, a supposedly serious paper.
The top half of the front is given over to a photograph of Mo Farah not winning the London Marathon - the same space the newspaper dedicated to last year's Boston marathon, which you may recall ended in a bomb attack.
Page 3 is occupied by the Duchess of Cambridge not having a baby; 5 to Mo not winning the marathon again, and 7 to the "cut-throat rivalry" between people who spend £200 on dinner parties, along with other important stories, such as "mansumers" who spend almost as much as women on clothes and restaurants that look you up on Twitter or Facebook so they can "create a wonderful guest experience" for you.
On page 9 Terry Deary, the Horrible Histories author, says that school is useless and the singer Chrissie Hynde that alcohol is a scourge.
Then we reach the candybox at the top of the page. Someone called McCrory is offering advice to "age-obsessed women". Who? Should I know that surname? Is she a renowned psychologist?
No, she's an actor called Helen McCrory (who happens to be married to Damian Lewis). The mythical guilt of working mothers comes from Mumsnet and the skinny mothers-to-be from a survey of Californian women. Why Telegraph readers should be concerned about Peaches Geldof's yearning for a daughter is unclear, but they are told about it courtesy of an interview with Aga Living magazine.Holding this "women's interest" tripe together is a picture of Beyonce performing with her sister Solange at a Californian music festival.
MPs have gone on holiday, we're all winding down for Easter, so it's not the newsiest time of the year and producing a newspaper Sunday for Monday isn't easy. But for heaven's sake. This is just bilge.
If people want the Daily Mail they'll buy the Daily Mail, not an inferior copy. Helen McCrory might be a very nice woman and a top-rate actor, but what she thinks about fellow women is irrelevant; Chrissie Hynde is a good singer, but her views on alcohol are irrelevant. Terry Deary's books are mildly educational so his views on teachers are slightly less irrelevant. They might be relevant if any of these three was involved in some serious initiative to address a recognised failing, but they each just happened to have been talking to some other publication.
The same applies to most of the stories in today's paper. It's as though the Telegraph has gone round hoovering up other people's work and emptied the bag all over its news pages.
The lefthand page leads on GP services, climate change and Tory "penthouse orgies" were all Sunday splashes. Another on schools covering up bad behaviour is the result of a University of East Anglia survey (probably the best new "serious" story of the day), and the fifth is a prelim of tonight's Panorama. There are a couple of fashion opinion pieces on David Cameron and the Duchess of Cambridge, one filler born from a Telegraph FoI request, but beyond those, there is precious little original journalism in the home news pages.
Instead, there are 11 stories lifted from other media organisations, 10 based on vested-interest surveys and 6 from specialist journals.
To be fair, the content is much the same in most of the other papers, but everyone else manages to make at least one story "their own" by giving the presentation some oomph.

Telegraph page 10

The Telegraph looks tidy enough, but there isn't enough variety in the lengths of the stories, so they all seem to have equal weight. The non-pregnancy is the only piece in the home pages to run at more than 500 words. The climate change or the GPs - even though they had been elsewhere yesterday - should have been given more space and prominence with graphics and analysis. Even the nonsense about competitive dinner partying could have been dressed up.
It's almost as though no one was reading and assessing the words; that they had just been poured into predetermined boxes around a succession of pretty, but pretty unimportant, standalone photographs.
In this way, the page lead on pupils' behaviour in schools is tucked away in a corner next to a collection of Palm Sunday pictures of the Pope. It is not only afforded less space and prominence than either the papal photographs or Terry Deary's views on education, but it also misses out the key finding that behaviour in our schools is worse than in other countries.
And finally, there is the story about a hedge fund manager who dodged his train fares for five years and then coughed up £43,000 on demand to avoid prosecution. Didn't anyone think that might be a better page lead than a rehashed magazine interview in which we learn from Helen McCrory's dad that she goes to the White House but "never, ever acts like a star"?

A royal baby that isn't and the exclusives that aren't

13/4/2014

For Kate's bump, read Kate's bumpy ride.
If you had suffered morning sickness as badly as the Duchess of Cambridge did when she was expecting Prince George, would you go bouncing down the river in a jet boat?
If you were regarded as an international role model for motherhood, would you be photographed drinking wine when pregnant?
I think we can assume that the Duchess will not be producing a sibling for George within the next nine months.
Yet this morning the Star has a white-on-purple ROYAL WORLD EXCLUSIVE above the splash heading "Wills: baby no2 is on the way".

kate winetasting

On the way, that is, in the sense of perhaps there'll be another baby sometime. There is no attempt to hold up the "Kate's expecting" pretext conveyed by the heading beyond the front page.
The third of the three pars on page 1 says: "It's the clearest clue yet that Wills and Kate are already trying for a brother or sister for eight-month-old George".
The hint came in a remark the Prince made to a woman who made a shawl for George: "You might have to make another one soon" - and the "soon" is disputed.

Eight words are enough to drive Fleet Street into a frenzy. Far from being exclusive - as the Express, Mirror and People also claimed - the "story" appears almost everywhere. Only the Independent on Sunday and Observer ignore it. Kate is the front-page picture for the Telegraph and Sunday Times - and both refer to the hint in their captions.

In the end, they all accept that the most they've got is a hint. So why go so far over the top with the headlines? And why claim as exclusive a story that patently isn't? If Kate had been pregnant and the Star had got the story to itself, would it have diluted the front page with the promise of a free box of Maltesers and four other puffs (one of which points to yesterday's Sun splash)?
If it was exclusive, why did the Mirror make its readers wait until pages 14-15 for the story, the Express to page 5 and the People to pages 12-13?
Hats off here to the Sun, which didn't even make it a page lead, but used it as a picture story on 15.

The Independent on Sunday may shun the royals, but it, too, comes a cropper on the exclusive front. Its splash on GPs is shared with the Telegraph, and its leak from the UN's latest climate report is not only shared with the Observer, which leads on the story, but less detailed and doesn't even include its title. It's a shame, because the paper is looking good in spite of its shortage of resources.

People front 13-04-2014

The People boasts of an exclusive not only on the baby that isn't, but also on Peaches Geldof and on its splash "Violent rages of Costa killer".
(By the way, the quotes are not necessary on the word killer, since Mayka Kukucova has admitted shooting the so-called King of Bling Andy Bush, but claims that she was acting in self-defence).
In this story Bush's 19-year-old daughter Ellie describes Kukocova as obsessively jealous, like a child who couldn't control her anger. Nick Dorman reports that on a shopping trip Kukocova had been upset that Bush wouldn't buy her things she wanted. “She went into a blind rage, screaming and threw a handbag at him. She did it to purposefully hurt him and then stormed off. We didn’t see her for a few hours, it was a common thing.”
“She stamped all over his laptop, then put it underneath a tap and put it back in the case. When we got back to England he realised but he tried to ignore it. He thought he could change her."

mail ellie bush

But look here, at pages 24-25 of the Mail. Ben Ellery in Spain and Nick Craven in London write about Ellie Bush and her opinion of Kukucova. She's like a child, apparently, and can't control her anger. There was a shopping trip and a thrown handbag, and a laptop held under a tap. And it's not only the quotes that are virtually identical: both papers illustrate the story with the same photograph - although the Mail flips its version (naughty!)
If this was a catch-up job, it was a supremely slick operation even by the Mail's high standards.

Saturday papers are grim. Bring back fluffy Friday

12/4/2014

kate

For once SubScribe says "Hurrah for Kate", a bright spot in a bleak landscape

Once upon a time, back in the dear old 90s before every business had introduced 24/7 working, Saturdays were a day of leisure.

At the Times, Peter Stothard decreed that Saturday papers should therefore have a different feel. So different that heads of the news departments were kicked out of the building and a dedicated team ruled. Stories about strikes and politics struggled to find a home between special projects on Big Brother and the upsurge in cheesemaking cottage industries. It wasn't long before the hard-nosed hard-news set were talking disparagingly about "fluffy Friday".

Most papers adopted a similar strategy; all added new supplements, magazines, TV guides, and the Saturday editions became as cumbersome as the Sundays. With so much room elsewhere for fluff and chatter, news reasserted itself in the main books, although the legacy of the long read, the interview, the serialisation, the light spread survived.

Looking at the papers today SubScribe hankered after the old fluffy Friday. There is a superabundance of sex, but it's not cuddly sex or passionate sex, it's predatory paedophilia and drunken fumblings.

The Guardian and the two Independents are still agonising over the fallout from the Nigel Evans trial; the Mail has moved on - or rather back - to the 70s, where it seems to have taken up residence, to make a song and dance about the late Liberal MP Cyril Smith.

For the drugs and rock'n'roll, we turn to the Sun, which has a pop star taking drugs (yawn), and the Star with Simon Cowell's gay sex drug shock. Go on, admit it, you're dying to know. Well, the shock bit comes when Amanda Holden asks him if he is sniffing poppers - the "gay sex drug". The answer was apparently "no". Cowell regularly used smelling salts to clear his head before a show. This is possibly more compelling than the deceit: "bring on the smelling salts", with its delicate Victorian lady connotations, applied to the all-powerful Cowell has a certain je ne sais quoi.

mirror 1st edn

mirror 2nd edn

OK, Blue and Simon Cowell don't really count as rock'n'roll..but there is also a lot of death to make up for that failing. The millionaire killed by his model lover is still giving good value (funny that we see so many more pictures of her than of him), as is Pistorius with his courtroom histrionics. The Mirror first edition splashed on his latest clash with the prosecutor, but it later changed up to "Mum of two beheaded by her ex". Nothing like a graphic headline to put the kids off their scrambled eggs.

The Telegraph and Times are equally gloomy in their own way - or perhaps lacklustre is a better word - the Telegraph has an archetypal Daily Mail splash on the "unfair" tax burden on families with stay-at-home mums, but without the headline-writing flair of its tabloid role model.

express

The Times takes the most-boring-front-of-the-day award with its combination of a free First World War poster and a lead on "pointless Liberal Democrats".

The Express should have won for its "black box found" head (because it hasn't been) but the way the Queen is laughing her head off at the very notion makes it a page to treasure.

As we've said before, Saturday papers are huge and juggling the flatplan and the schedule to create a balanced, readable paper is an art. Nowhere is its importance more apparent than in today's Mail, which - unusually - fails to such an extent that the reader loses the will to live halfway through the news section.

smith wordle

The paper leads on the official cover-up of Cyril Smith's rampant paedophilia, with a turn on page 2. Page 3 is showbiz, so it should be light, but it's a 'fakery' story and there's too much black in the picture. A jolly Kate and Wills spread follows, but we're soon back down in the dumps with the Omagh bomb court case and outrage over a head teacher taking a month off in term time to get married.

This prepares us for the nitty gritty - five pages of Cyril Smith (which allows plenty of room to have another bash at the evil trio Hewitt, Dromey and Harman).

mail smith spread

mail smith spread2

cyril smith 5

The first spread is certainly well designed. But it's really stretching a point to make the story run to four, let alone five pages as well as the splash. The Harman story on the second righthander is 90% rehash of its campaign earlier this year, and the final page is so short of material that it needs a ginormous puff.
The paper is clearly pleased with its book serialisation and wants to make the most of it. You can't blame it, it's a good story. But how unfortunate that publication should coincide with the end of the Nigel Evans trial. For we have only a moment to fret about our offshore fortunes being taxed and the remember Sue Townsend before we have to face this..

mail evans

and this...

mail housing

platell column

...and back to the unwelcome sex...

The Amanda Platell column is followed by the beheaded mum we met in the Mirror, a spread on the murdered millionaire and another spread on murdered British soldiers.

It's just all too much in one run. A supplement on baby George can't change it - and there will be many parents who won't want their children picking up their paper today.
That isn't a good idea. Let's bring back good old fluffy Friday.