Paper Monitor
10:27 UK time, Friday, 13 November 2009
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Here is Paper Monitor's seventh law of journalist priority.
"If things happen to attractive blonde women, they are always more newsworthy than if they happen to paunchy, balding men called Derek."
This rule informs the size of the space dedicated to the story of a 23-year-old beautician from Essex who takes on a property developer in court without the help of lawyers and saves her mother's home and business.
Eat your heart out Erin Brockovich. Now make no mistake, if Derek was the protagonist in the story, it would still be a heartwarming yarn that would make the papers. Just not as prominently perhaps.
It dominates page five of the Daily Mail and is 28.5 x 7.5cm.
The only odd thing in the Daily Telegraph is that they wait until page 11 to , although there is an 18.5 x 12.5cm picture. The seventh law is also in evidence on page seven of the Telegraph where there is a young blonde woman who is fighting a fine for throwing bread to the ducks in the park.
Over in the Daily Mail there is -full name "the diminutive John Bercow" - and his wife Sally (cf Jamie Cullum and Sophie Dahl, Bernie Ecclestone and ex-wife Slavica, and Sol Kerzner and just about anyone). The occasion is that Mrs Bercow is, err, planning on becoming a Labour councillor. But really it's all about the photo.
Elsewhere in the Mail, and this morning it's hard to put the thing down, there's that wins today's gonzo award. Take your hat off to intrepid reporter Jessica Hatcher as she sheds her clothes to take part in the "naturist Olympics".
And finally there is a most unusual thing on pages 28 and 29 of the Daily Mail. Last month Nick Davies - whose book Flat Earth News caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth in newsrooms around the country - did an investigation into the much-trumpeted national police investigation into sex trafficking, Pentameter 2.
His conclusion was that despite the trumpeting, the operation failed to result in a single person being proved to have coerced somebody into being a prostitute. Trafficking stats first had doubt cast on them in January .
But the Mail is with a "special investigation" that starts with a hat tip to Davies, and, well, a bit of investigation of his investigation.
Interesting.
The 
