In Defence of Foreign Aid
A newspaper is like a puzzle. Journalists write material that fits the exact requirement of particular pages – news, sports, health, arts, business. Like every puzzle, the structure of a newspaper is clear and logical when you understand it. Newspapers are predictable; readers know they can turn to the back page for sports news and page three of some publications for a topless teenager.
When a newspaper has a great story they will break their own format and spread the news over many pages. This is rare but it happened twice in the last week: the Guardian’s Monday April fourth edition dedicated their first 7 pages to the “Panama Papers” – a story which they broke in the UK and is having a global impact.
A day earlier, on Sunday April third, the Mail on Sunday (MOS) did something similar. They dedicated 11 pages, including the front page, to a scandal of their own making about Britain’s “£12 billion foreign aid madness.” (more…)