Paper Monitor
13:19 UK time, Monday, 8 December 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Some people like change. Some like innovation and surprises.
But there's something strangely refreshing about all the newspapers reverting to type and hitting their readers with some classic, textbook, you-know-where-you-are-with-these-stories. For the purposes of this Paper Monitor, we shall call them Stories-Calculated-To-Please-The-Archetypal-Reader (SCTPTAR)
In the Daily Express, there's a dream of a peach of a story. "NOW A TAX ON TREE HOUSES". And there's more. "Shock Labour raid on garden extras". The only minus is that this story can only go downhill from such a beaut of a headline.
In the Guardian, there's almost too many SCTPTARs to mention. The front page is "People power vital to climate deal - minister". Not bad. But with the story about archaeologists digging up Greenham Common peace camp, you start feeling you're in an April Fools piece.
A trawl of the vegan offshoot of the camp reveals a big stash of milk bottles, casting doubt on the camp's mission statement.
It has the killer quote: "It reminded me of Lewis Binford's work on the Mask Site (in Arctic Alaska) where Nunamiut hunters watched and waited."
Paper Monitor is not making this up.
The Sun has "FATFIGHTER PREZZA" on page 14.
The Daily Mail has a story highlighting Claire Curtis-Thomas's campaign against "lad's magazines" as featured in the a mere two and a half years ago.
Their description of Loaded is memorable. "The magazine has a page of celebrity lookalikes from pornographic publications. This month's include US president-elect Barack Obama."
On the front-page of the Times there's a classic SCTPTAR - "Traditional subjects go in schools shake-up".
It's all so comforting.
The 
