Paper Monitor

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN FOR ME??? That's what Paper Monitor really wants to know today. Thank heavens then that all the papers are falling over each other to answer exactly that question.

So what imaginative ways do they find to promote their "what it means for you" guides to the casual newsstand browser? And - crucially in these tough times - who offers the MOST COVERAGE?

"What it means for you" (Times 20-page guide)
"WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU" (Daily Telegraph's "19 pages of brilliant analysis")
"Inside: What it means for you" (Independent's 16-page pull-out)
"What it means for you" (Guardian, prolix as ever, offers a "special 12-page section with the best analysis of the pre-budget report including our special at-a-glance guide to how it will hit your pocket")

The Daily Mail offers 15 pages, but for reasons unknown fails to badge that coverage as "what it means for you". This is very, very out of step with prevailing practice.

(Disclaimer: Naturally, BBC News website also offered an article entitled "What it means to you". Yesterday.)

The Sun's headline says it all really - "UP TO ARREARS" - proving that the job of a 20-page special pull-out can be done in just three words.

This does make Paper Monitor wonder though... is there any way the physical weight of publications can be indicative of wider trends?

This is worth further thought. Forget Natch, Porridge, Formulas et al (thanks Rick P, Your Letters, Monday). Perhaps this is the dawn of something new. Let's call it Paperweight. Anyone with an accurate pair of scales is invited to weigh a publication of their choice and let's see if we can't draw some conclusions.

Here's something to kick it off. The frankly ridiculous GQ 20th anniversary special which has nearly 600 pages comes in at 1.7kg or 3lbs 13oz. It is pictured on Paper Monitor's scales. (All those gender speculators out there should rest assured there is a bumper copy of Glamour just out of shot.) By comparison, a 1978 edition of Radio Times, with Ian Botham, Sharron Davies and Daley Thompson on the cover comes in at just 188g or 6ozs.

(Wondering why that old Radio Times was to hand? It's amazing what you find when you start saving money under the carpet in the airing cupboard.)

So submissions for Paperweight are welcome in the usual way (for the uninitiated, there's a comments button at the foot of this entry).

And there's one futher thing to say.

The Times reports today that Australians who have for so long enriched the cultural life of the United Kingdom are deciding to go home. But there is one rather large elephant in the room. Read these sentences from the paper's leader article and see if you can guess which massively influential Australian isn't mentioned. (Clue: he's now American.)

"It is no longer true, if it ever were, that the Australian migrant to Britain is a West London barworker whose only cultural contribution is a strange habit of posting statements as questions... [T]he cultural contribution of the expatriates - Clive James, Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Nick Cave, Peter Porter - means that it is silly and patronising to say the Australians had to come here to sample the culture they lacked at home. And that is without even mentioning Rolf Harris. Or the Minogue sisters, for that matter."

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