Paper Monitor
13:58 UK time, Thursday, 22 September 2011
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Someone once told Paper Monitor, when it was still at journalism school, that the first rule of newspaper humour is... it's not actually funny.
But if there was a second rule it would be that all subs fundamentally think alike.
Take the this picture of a praying mantis with a couple of its legs in the air. Under the headline "Praying Alive" it says:
"With its arms in the air, legs bent and what looks like a huge grin on its face this dancing bug really is praying alive. Strutting its stuff on a branch in Cyprus the Iris Oratoria Mantis appears to perfectly mimic John Travolta's 'Stayin' Alive' dance from the 1977 hit film Saturday Night Fever."
The same picture is in the Guardian where it's caption reads... "praying alive". And in the Metro it's, er, "praying alive".
But is it fair to say "perfectly mimic". It's not wearing a white suit or anything. It's just that it happens to have its arms/legs in the air.
Anyway, on to the Sun where the . Intrepid Sun man Nick Francis has infiltrated the activists' camp at the Dale Farm traveller site.
How was he able to pull off this man-of-a-thousand-faces feat. Er, by putting on combat trousers and a checked shirt. Paper Monitor would hazard a guess that some may not have been fooled by this audacious bluff. Francis is clean shaven and, indeed, cleaner cut than the average policeman.
Only one paragraph really draws the eye.
"One baby-faced youngster in a black cap told me he is studying philosophy at Bristol University, a top-level establishment known to scoop up rejects from Oxford and Cambridge."
Somewhere today there was a university press officer coughing up his cornflakes.
The 
