I ask because of this morning's Mirror front page.
The paper splashed on the death of Nick Cave's 15-year-old son
The main heading described Cave as a "Rock star" - about the same count as "Nick Cave" - and the strapline called him a legend. Only in the third head at the foot of the page was his name mentioned.
This seemed a little odd and Gameoldgirl tweeted as much, setting in train this little conversation with @dailymirrorstyle
@gameoldgirl In all honesty he's not a household name for most of our readers.
— Mirror Style Guide (@TheMirrorStyle) July 16, 2015
So which musicians SHOULD Mirror readers have heard of? Where to draw line? Any 'star' bigger than Rick Witter of Shed Seven?! @gameoldgirl
— Mirror Style Guide (@TheMirrorStyle) July 16, 2015
The death of a 15-year-old boy in a cliff fall in Brighton at the start of the school holidays would probably be worth a slot in the nationals anyway. But it was obviously the celebrity link that led to its prominence.
Whether it was worth a splash is another matter. It's a fair point that the Bad Seeds may not be in every Mirror reader's CD collection. So why lead on the story? To trick people into buying the paper by holding out the possibility that the star might be someone they like?
Surely not. Let's try to get this straight. This is a splash because The boy's father is famous. But, even though the father's a "legend", the Mirror doesn't think he's famous enough for its readers to have heard of him.
Oh heavens! We're going round in circles.
What did everyone else do?
The story was a page lead for everyone except the Independent and i - which gave it short singles - and the Star, which used it as a downpage picture story. All except the Telegraph and Mail put the name in their headings.
The Mail preferred a bit of implied victim-blaming in the sub-deck, telling us that the lad fell "close to where teens diced with death".
The Telegraph, with four decks to fill, started with the convoluted "Teenage son of...", and gave us the location and the distance of the fall, but still couldn't manage the name of the famous person.
Equally bonkers was the Guardian, which went to the other extreme, assuming that "Cave" was identification enough, using valuable characters on the superfluous "injuries" rather than the more helpful "Nick".
Am I going mad here? Isn't the obvious heading the one the Sun used?
But that's drifting from the point that perplexes me most: why did the Mirror splash on this story if they thought readers wouldn't know - and therefore care about - who they were on about?
Your thoughts please.
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