LRN No.10: paper reviews in the digital age

Plus: Michael Barrymore, fiscal drag and prawn neck pillows

Any given week, you will find me somewhere talking about newspapers on television.

There are many reasons why this is weird.

Waiting to break into the Sky News Glass Box on Tuesday night

First, it might seem odd that anyone does newspaper reviews at all, given that so few of us actually buy papers nowadays. In the age of digital-first and 24-hour news, many people think newspaper front pages don’t matter anymore.

Those people are wrong, of course. A front page crystalises how editors want us to think about the news of the day, and you don’t have to buy a newspaper to absorb that narrative. The framing of the story is worthy of discussion. And lots of people want to watch paper reviews: as much as Nigel Farage might wish otherwise, the Sky News Press Preview consistently has the highest viewing figures of any of the news channels in the evenings.

The other thing that’s weird is that it’s me that does it. I am a long form journalist and not a news person. When I did it for the first time, on the BBC, 15 years ago, I cried with nerves on the day leading up to it. Live TV. The Financial Times. I might have to talk about quantitative easing.

But I love newspapers, and I can talk about them forever. My first ever byline was on The Editor, the Guardian’s weekly digest of what the other papers were saying. (I wrote 100 words about tabloid coverage of “troubled TV presenter Michael Barrymore”. I was so proud.)

I no longer cry with nerves. Sharing platforms with several men over the years who have no discernible source for their self-belief has taught me that believing in your right to be there is enough: have something to say, say it confidently, and you will be fine.

Do it enough, and you will learn a lot. I can now talk about fiscal drag and quantitative easing, as well as sex robots.

Things that have caught my eyes and ears:

• I read Sophie Elmhirst’s new book, Maurice and Maralyn, out next year. It’s about a couple who spent 118 days shipwrecked on a raft in the Pacific in the 1970s after their boat was sunk by a whale. It made me think about marriage, resilience, and how I would rather die than live off turtle livers and tinned rice pudding

• I finally listened to The Debutante, Jon Ronson’s Audible series on the extraordinary life of neo-Nazi police informant Carole Howe. Dark and brilliant

• I visited the newly refreshed National Portrait Gallery to see the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize exhibition. I loved this one of Shaun Rider. This image made me want to hold my 10 year old son close

• I enjoyed reclining on a bean bag with a neck pillow in the shape of a prawn to watch underwater scenes at The Barbican’s RE/SISTERS exhibition, but that’s pretty much the only thing I liked about it