Paper Monitor
11:47 UK time, Tuesday, 4 March 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
There was a spring in Paper Monitor's step this morning on picking the papers up from the doormat at Magazine Towers. For last night's final of University Challenge gave one the opportunity to greatly impress one's significant other. Yes, it was the "Words Regarded as Troublesome" bonus round in which Paxo asked the contestants which word in the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News style guide he was reading the description of.
For anyone who didn't see it, the words were "crescendo", "fulsome" and "enormity". And Paper Monitor got the correct answers EXTREMELY quickly. Significant Other was, strangely, completely unimpressed, only remarking how interesting it was that the infinity sign (the figure eight on its side) is apparently known as a "lemniscate" and asking whether Paper Monitor knew that, which of course put one in one's place.
Still, it felt good.
But on to the matter in hand – today's papers. The thing about thrusting young media-savvy royals is there's always another one just around the corner. So as one ostensible PR campaign for a grandchild of the monarch peters out, so another begins. This time, it's the turn of Princess Eugenie. Many of the papers picture the younger of Prince Andrew's daughters from a photoshoot with a glossy magazine.
It's one of these deals where rights to use the picture are only granted if the full cover of the magazine in question is also reproduced. How does Paper Monitor know? Because it gets the pictures too, and at the top of this one, in thumping bold red capitals, are the conditions of use:
"PICTURE MUST BE USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH TATLER MAGAZINE COVERSCAN"
See, even repeating these terms requires naming the magazine in question and so giving it the oxygen of publicity.
But while many of the papers run the pictures, the Independent goes a stride further with a full-page edited extract from the magazine interview. Ok, that was a weak joke. It's actually the Telegraph.
And from it we learn that frankly, cousin Harry is a bit of an old duffer compared with the "streetwise and smart… edgy [and] modern" princess. While a stonewash-jeaned Harry tapped his toes at last summer's Diana memorial concert to assorted aging rockers, Eugenie likes "hip indie music" like Death Cab for Cutie.
The effect on Paper Monitor (not to mention Telegraph readers) is to leave it feeling a little deflated. Is there a term for being "out-hipped" by an 18-year-old, public school-boarding member of the Royal Family? (Submissions gratefully accepted by the COMMENTS button below).
Still, Paper Monitor (acting in the interests of its sister strand 10 things), is at least indebted to the princess for one factlet: her name isn't pronounced you-JAY-nee, rather YOO-genny "with the stress on the Eu".
And those are two letters you won't hear the Telegraph stressing in glowing terms very often.
Finally, and in other business, the Ashes to Ashes bandwagon is moving into second gear, with two stories (in the Mail and Express) today on the return of the perm.
The 
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