Paper Monitor
11:12 UK time, Wednesday, 23 January 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
One story, different approaches.
The very public trials and tribulations of Amy Winehouse continue in the fall-out from the Sun publishing footage of her smoking crack.
The Times pens a thoughtful and reflective leader on how "forty years on from Jagger, the case of Amy Winehouse demands different words". The paper famously protested that to imprison the Rolling Stone for the illegal possession of four amphetamines without a prescription was to "break a butterfly on a wheel".
Winehouse's case is very different, argues the leader, as today drugs are no longer associated with decadence and creativity but with blighted lives. While the authenticity of the crack-smoking images may be open to some question, her self-destruction has been very open. "Her best-known song is about her own refusal to address the problem of addiction: 'They tried to make me go to rehab but I said no, no, no.' The wit of Rehab may be postmodern. Her derelict behaviour will end with an early post-mortem."
While the paper's editor in 1967 felt that the State's overreaction was in danger of stifling creativity, today's Times says that the opposite is true in Winehouse's case. "The State's actions could save a great talent. She desperately needs to be brought into rehabilitation and, this time, to stay put there for weeks if not months."
Which neatly brings us to the Daily Star's take on her troubles: "AMY IN MENTAL CLINIC."
(By way of proving its sensitivity, the paper also carries a heart-rending double page interview with its former page three girl Jo Guest on the "crippling mystery illness" that could kill her - she hasn't had sex for a year as she's "so ugly". To illustrate this predicament, she even poses in her pants. And sensible vest.)
The 
