Paper Monitor
12:54 UK time, Friday, 2 February 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Alongside the rest of the papers, with their profiles carefully chiselled to match the concerns, desires and prejudices of their readership, the Times is something of an amorphous beast (Waugh-ian pun intended).
If the Guardian is woolly liberal; the Independent, hand-wringingly liberal; the Daily Telegraph, Major Fustum-Dustum; the Sun, white van man... you get the picture... where fits the Times?
Traditionally of course, it is the paper of record - reflecting the rich diversity of news from the high-end political scandal to the low-brow reality TV bust up. At least, that was before such stories meshed together to form a sort of uber news event.
What better manifestation of the Times' man in the street image than its give-away this week of DVDs by TV's Mr Everyman, Michael Palin.
The Times' ability to stick a thumb in the political wind and determine which way sentiments are shifting was demonstrated by its close ties with the New Labour spin machine. So it's no surprise to see the paper chumming up with the Cameron crowd, a point neatly illustrated by today's two-page report entitled Rise of the Right. The story charts how several right-of-centre think-tanks have come together in an effort to help their man into No 10.
Let's hope for the Shadow Cabinet's sake, that this roadmap to victory is clearer than the utterly bewildering "Spheres of Influence" graphic the Times has deployed presumably in an effort to make the whole story clearer.
With its concentric circles in varying shades of blue and arrows going in just about every direction, it looks like the instructions to one of those puzzles your auntie Jean would give you for Christmas in the hope it'll shut you up while she watches the Only Fools and Horses seasonal special.
There are "*" and "#" signs on some labels to denote something or other, green blobs and, as close to the epicentre of power as David Cameron himself is the mug of "Michael Gove* MP" "...friend of Cameron, Times columnist".
The 
