Paper Monitor
12:55 UK time, Friday, 3 April 2009
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Michelle Obama: articulate, questioning, educated individual or just a piece of Fleet Street fashion fodder? Paper Monitor presumed it to be the former, but struggled to find much evidence of such in the pages of today's press.
"Michelle's masterclass in hugs" runs the Daily Mail headline about Mrs O, before running to a sidebar entitled "But where did she get that cardy?" And on the following page, there's the dreaded "g" word - "What the girls really got up to!"
The Daily Express is little different. "Fashion dress sense deserts the first ladies".
To be fair, both papers acknowledge Mrs Obama's speech to a London secondary school on Thursday and even carry a few lines of what she said. But Paper Monitor is hungry to know more. There's only one thing for it - to head to that organ of self-respecting feminist thought, the Guardian. So how does it handle Mrs Obama's speech?
It doesn't.
While the paper has two articles on Mrs O - neither carries even a line of her public pronouncements. On the front, Mariella Frostrup, who presumably didn't have to sign a non-disclosure form for her role as an official "compere" for the leaders' spouses, has plenty of observations from inside the tent, but there's nothing about her emotional speech about the value of education. Inside, the paper it's: "Michelle, our belle. How Britain was wooed by the president's wife" - a piece by the Guardian fashion editor.
"Barack Obama and Gordon Brown have international interpreters and banks of microphones, policy pronouncements and footnoted treatises to help them deliver their messages. Their wives, by contrast, have only clothes, body language and the knowledge their schedule... will be minutely observed for clues written in diplomatic code."
Er, don't forget that speech.
The Daily Telegraph goes further than most in relating what Mrs Obama had to say in her speech - but then its piece is written by a man.
The Obamas weren't the only American import to land on these shores this week. A special mention for the brave souls who have launched the UK edition of Wired magazine, one of the few publications that Paper Monitor wallows in that isn't published on a daily basis.
The cover says "launch" issue, but you don't have to be very long in the tooth to know it's a relaunch, as there was a noble Wired UK way back in the day (a dozen years ago or more). It didn't last very long. And what Paper Monitor thought at the time still stands - is there enough going on in technology in the UK to justify its own Wired? Or does the US original Wired have it covered? (Odd, incidentally, that Wired and The Wire both have UK launches in the same week?)
It is, as mentioned above, a feat of bravery to launch a new magazine in these miserable times. They don't look worried though. In fact the editor, David Rowan, has had a magnificent styling for his editor's picture. No longer the kind of bloke you might see on the desk next to you, now a buff supermodel. Paper Monitor could do with a bit of that polish, please. How about a Wired investigation into hi-tech makeover techniques?
There is an interesting story about the iPlayer - though it controversially claims the device "saved the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ". Modesty forbids Paper Monitor from revealing who is widely recognised inside the corporation as most deserving of that accolade.
It's tradition in these parts to wish new ventures well on their way - and Paper Monitor is very happy to do so. Though with a castlist of experts who one has to believe are not made-up names (Ben Best, Violet Blue, Dr Dickson Despommier, Faith Popcorn, Prof Buddy Ratner, Dr Richard Silberglitt, Colonel Carl E Walz and Dr Richard Yada) it looks like they're leaving nothing to chance.
The 
