David: British newspapers

At first glance, you might think newspapers in Britain are in much better shape than they are stateside.

News stands carry the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, and an array of other newsprint dailies. Strangers thrust free copies of other publications -- City A.M., The London Paper, and others -- in your hands as you walk down the busy London streets.

Wow, you think: there’s much more selection here; a greater array of news sources and reading selections than in the rapidly diminishing one-paper towns and media mega-conglomerates back home.

But first looks can be deceiving. I asked our trip director Mel Montgomery, a native Brit and former official with the national tourism office where he was an assistant to Princess Diana’s stepmother, how many daily newspapers London has, and he said only one. The others are national papers. (Keep in mind that England has more than 13 times as many people as Oregon -- an estimated 51.5 million to our 3.8 -- living in a space that’s only a little more than half the size.)

If I’d had the time, money, and wherewithal to make a concerted comparison, it might have been interesting to examine which stories got the biggest play in Britain versus back home. The biggest news story that featured in both the serious dailies and the cheeky free papers concerned a scandal in which the British Attorney General, Baroness Scotland (the first woman ever to become the country’s top law official) had been discovered to employ an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper. The girl in question, Loloahi Tapui, 27, had come to the UK on a student visa in 2003, married, and been working for Lady Scotland six months. Part of the reason it got big play is that the Baroness had pressed so hard to get the law against such practices passed in the first place.

The second, less sexy news story that predominated in the serious dailies -- sometimes on the front page, sometimes tucked in on page 2 -- concerned the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and whether and how readily he would use “the c word” (cuts in the national budget).

The alternative weeklies gave more play to a screaming fight between Rolling Stones bass player Ronnie Wood, 62, and his 20-year-old girlfriend Ekaterina Ivanova in the wee hours of Monday morning, Sept. 14. Neighbors heard screamed obscenities, and a threat by Ivanova to commit suicide. Later in the week, large “removal men” were photographed carrying Wood’s guitars out of their north London flat.

The papers speculated that not only was Wood tired of the year-long romance with a pouty teen, but missed his ex- (second) wife Jo and children. I may have seen a gossip column item in which her friends stated she was doing just fine without him. I would imagine far fewer column inches and photos (if any) were devoted to this one in stateside papers.

It turned out our five days in London were the final week for a lively free daily called The London Paper -- its masthead read “thelondonpaper” with “paper” in trademark purple ink. Since it was making a big deal about its impending departure (regular readers and British celebs from pop singer Pixie Lott to Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre, offered quotes about how much they were going to miss it), I was able to learn a lot in just a couple of issues.

It was in tabloid format, like most of the older, more legitimate papers in England (and most of the alternative weeklies in the U.S.). What I liked was that the spine was stapled so it didn’t fall apart if I loosed my grip on it, the way the Willamette Week and the Portland Mercury back in Portland do. It had been launched by its young publisher and staff with backing money from … wait for it … Rupert Murdoch, and the tanking economy had killed its hopes, despite its apparently having made a big splash.

There was lots of color, both color photography and solid ink in the large ads. The content read more upbeat, less snarky in general, than the alternative weekly tabloids I’m used to seeing -- except in the fashion and pop star columns -- although the writers appeared to pitch their prose to twenty-somethings who were used to a lot of drinking and casual sex after their day at the stock exchange (or wish such were the case, I suppose). There were advice columns by gay and lesbian writers.

Among its most beloved items was a pet photo feature -- not just cute cats and dogs, sometimes doing a neat trick or dressed up in silly outfits, but snakes, pigs, hedgehogs, mice … everybody got into the act. Each photo included a brief list of the animal’s favorite TV shows, pet peeves, and worst bad habit.