Get this. The German elite are up in arms over the Frankfurter Allgemeine's latest "redesign". If you can call it that.
The leading national paper, always a serious and erudite title, has decided that now, in additional to the striking red box (dimensions 3cm x 3cm) on the far left column, it should lead with a (tiny) photo – yes, a photo – on the front page. A photo?!A media expert here in Frankfurt tells me that, two weeks after the relaunch, the intelligentsia aren't too chuffed. Pictures, they cry, should be saved for big stories – like skyscrapers being destroyed or Berlin Walls coming down. But a photo of a rock star? And he's not even got a Nobel Prize? Outrageous.The explanation, I'm told, is that 90% of the FAZ's readers are subscribers, who are attracted not by on-the-spot hooks but by respectability over a long period of time. Compare this with Bild, their answer to The Sun, which offers no subscription and has to grip its readers with the cover if it wants to make any money.The UK broadsheets, on the other hand, are somewhere in between the two extremes, while our tabloids are more like Bild.And all this on the day that The Times leads with a photo of Tom Cruise and the Daily Telegraph runs a cute badger. UPDATE: It appears Harry de Quetteville's Telegraph blog from Berlin had the same thing to say. Unfortunately he got there a couple of weeks before me. Oh well, speed's not all.
A photo? Shock! Horror!
