Paper Monitor
12:53 UK time, Tuesday, 29 April 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
So it's agreed... after the government's climbdown over the 10p tax rate, U-turns are a bad thing, suggesting weakness, indecisiveness and so on. Cut to today's Daily Mail front page: "CANNABIS: AT LAST A U-TURN".
Meanwhile, at the Daily Telegraph, the paper is busy preening itself over news that its front page is, according to a study from Manchester University, a "thing of beauty".
Were the researchers mistakenly sidetracked into considering one of those refined-looking women who habitually populate the paper's cover? It seems not. The front page in question dates from 30 January, 2006, and while today's paper inexplicably refrains from reprinting that page, thanks to the archivists at the Beeb, you can see it here.
According to the paper's report: "...filling the page with large, medium and small images made the newspaper easy and interesting to read from a range of distances."
A few observations if you will permit...
1. The main picture is not of a Keira Knightley clone but Saddam Hussein
2. The proportions of the main picture are atypical for the Telegraph, being landscape-ish
3. This squeezes the lead story, on the left, into two columns - giving it the proportions of stick-thin supermodel
4. The are two abutting pictures - that of Berlusconi and the advert for Great Rail Journeys
5. Today's Telegraph looks markedly different, having undergone a facelift.
The 
