Paper Monitor
12:49 UK time, Tuesday, 12 April 2011
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Having ideas for features is one of the harder things journalists have to do.
Yes, it doesn't compare with the perils of war reporting or investigating the South American drugs trade. But still, it's just difficult to think of things. This is probably why features editors just use the same ideas over and over again.
Paper Monitor believes in the "two-year rule". It's the period you must leave after every piece before doing it again. It's the period by which all but the most elephantine of reader memories will have forgotten the last time.
Today's best example is in the Daily Telegraph. It's a .
But the subject, how we love a British sporting loser, is as old as, well, Britain's first organised entry into international sport.
You can hear it echoing gloomily over morning news meetings all over the land every time England go out on penalties or Andy Murray wilts and then cries.
It's not a bad idea. It's a great idea as long as you're not a believer in the two-year rule.
The Daily Mirror has another peach on page 16 and 17. It's a charming feature in which they have employed lip readers .
It's a lovely idea. So lovely that the .
The point about this is that good ideas are often not wholly original. Sometimes they're just refinements of good ideas that surfaced just over two years ago.
The 
