Paper Monitor
11:47 UK time, Wednesday, 12 January 2011
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
We have noted on these pages before that the Indy had borrowed a trick from Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, picking out a bit of colour on a black and white photo.
They're at it again with their picture of Barclays boss Bob Diamond. The photo is black, but his tie is red. Is it supposed to be poignant?
There is plenty of critical coverage of Diamond in the papers, but the Daily Mail is probably the meanest. It's Ephraim Hardcastle column says:
"At 59, Diamond retains a full of head of impressively dark hair. But would its colour survive a sharp shower of rain?"
There's a double impugning here. Of Diamond of course, but also effectively suggesting the cosmetics industry sells hair dye that can't even survive a rain shower.
Flicking through the Times and the Guardian, one instantly gets an insight into how picture desks work. Both newspapers find space in their coverage of the floods in Australia for a picture of two women, one wearing a bikini top, rescuing a wallaby.
Over in the Sun, page two has a classic bit of sub-ese, a more dismal category of distorted English even than journal-ese.
The word "sirs" as a synonym for "teachers". In journalism school Paper Monitor was told never to use language that people wouldn't use in conversation. The Sun subs' bench must have missed that lesson.
The same page has "lag" for "prisoner", as well as "rap" and "slam" for "criticise". Then there's "blast" a couple of pages on. "Sir" gets another outing on page 20.
Oh dear.
The 
