May 08, 2004
I love London's newspaper trade
One thing I utterly adore about London is its relationship to the printed word. The city overflows with bookstores and newsagents and supports literally incredible volume of magazines and newspapers -- II mean, it strains my credulity to imaging that all those periodicals are actually sustainable!
The newspaper business is so highly evolved. The newsagents write the day's headline in chisel-tip-market calligraphy -- standardized across thousands of newsagents, many of whom don't have English as a first language -- and prop it outside their shops on sandwich boards. These headlines are exquisitely well-written teasers that demand that you investigate further, almost always appealing to prurience (a lot of London's papers are frankly shit; I've heard liberal intelligensia friends dismiss the "red-top" tabloids in particular).
Unlike Namerica's newspaper-box sales-pitches, the you can't see the front page of the paper without getting right up in the newsagent's face, and, like as not, paying him. All you get is that teaser.
In my nabe, there's a local weekly rag called the Camden Chronicle, which has the most delicious, sensationalistic headlines of all.
Posted by Cory Doctorow at May 8, 2004 10:11 PM
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