[dailyfail] Panic spreads as hundreds die after reading Daily Mail … Terrible news that reading the Daily Mail seems to kill people every day … ‘Critics have long warned of the dangers inherent in reading the Mail. Jacky Felcher, spokesperson for the anti-news campaign group GABS, announced that her organisation had been receiving reports of problems for some time. “One woman actually watched helplessly as her husband choked on his croissant while reading the Melanie Phillips column at breakfast. It was horrific.” Despite medical reports showing that not one of the deaths are directly due to actually reading the Daily Mail, the headlines are still appearing as if the facts are some how irrelevant, ensuring a significant public backlash.’

[funny] Paul Dacre leaves house wearing unflattering suit, sporting high forehead haircut, and no make-up … wonderfully done spoof Daily Mail article … ‘Although his outfit showed off none of the assets you come to expect in the Daily Mail, the lack of ‘cleavage’ and ‘side moob’ was more than compensated for by the hole at the top of his shirt exposing a right tit To make things worse, he walked out of his front door with no make-up.’

[dailyfail] The Daily Mail is a Drug … an interesting thought on why the Daily Mail is successful … ‘The reason for the Daily Mail’s continued growth is simple. For every story it runs it asks itself, “How can I present this story in manner that will generate a feeling of disgust in the reader?” The paper is, by now, phenomenally good at presenting news stories so that they always do generate that emotion of disgust. From that, all else follows…’

[dailyfail] You’ve seen the sidebar of shame, now check out the Daily Mail *timeline* of shame … ‘2002 – Claims mouth wash, oral sex, Pringles and Facebook cause cancer.’

[dailyfail] Daily Mail Headlines Replaced With User Comments …

[dailyfail] Profits Of Doom … Is the Daily Mail Online as sucessful as it seems? … ‘DMGT also reported that their print advertising was down 2%, bringing in only £53million this year. This figure was kind of brushed over in favour of talk of website growth – played down almost – but it’s worth a quick look. £53 million is £12 million more in ad revenue than the website generates. Yes, the website’s growth has been impressive – it has become the biggest newspaper website in the world – but it’s actually pulling in much less cash than its dead-tree equivalent. The Daily Mail’s circulation is 1.6 million, about 1% of its apparent online audience. So the ad space they’re selling online is actually, relatively, worthless and it appears to be their only major stream of revenue.’

[dailymail] Daily Mail Guidance To Staff In The 1960s … Things have certainly changed at the Mail. ‘1. No member of the staff intrudes or is called on to intrude into private lives where no public interest is involved.’

[dailymail] How Much Are You Hated By The Daily Mail? … they hated me by question 9.

[dailyfail] Should I Read The Daily Mail? … There can only ever be one correct answer to this question.

[dailyfail] What do Daily Mail commenters think about young criminals? … a look into the mind of a commenter on the Daily Mail’s website… ‘The Daily Mail is a newspaper generally catering to a right-leaning audience that mourns the death of England proper. Its website’s commenters fit that mould and there is plenty that they would like government to resurrect. Typing in “bring back” shows some of the things that they are after. Corporal or capital punishment is at the top of their list with some comments stating adamantly that the birch should make a return.’

[people] Go Look: Paul Dacre checks out Sid Vicious at Baton Rouge Airport in the 1970s.

[dailyfail] How the Daily Mail Conquered England … The New Yorker Profiles The Daily Mail … ‘The Mail has an oral quality, prompting the exclamations of wonder or disgust that attend what the media critic Roy Greenslade has called “Hey, Doris!” stories. Its quirks include a love of aviation, and the annoying habit of inserting real-estate prices into stories that have nothing to do with them, such as the death in a ski-resort accident of a boy whose parents “live in a £1 million house.” Its columnists range from sensible to unhinged. (One, Liz Jones, recently wrote about stealing her husband’s sperm in an attempt to have a child without his permission, earning her the nickname Jizz Loans.)’

[press] Dail Mail Ethics Memorandum circa 1966 … A different time, a different Daily Mail … ‘No member of the staff intrudes or is called to intrude into private lives where no public interest is involved.’

[dailyfail] The Inner World Of A Daily Mail Reader … ‘I just want to die.’ [via @qwghlm]

[dailyfail] The Insider: The Secrets Behind The Mail Online’s Soaraway Success … how the Daily Mail does SEO to drive traffic … ‘The SEO team receive stories from journalists and then change the headlines and add some key words before launching them on the site. It’s like a sub-editing job using SEO, a machine churning through the content. The journalists and sub-editors continue to do the job they would be doing while the SEO team’s brief is to drive traffic. Bosses at the Mail look at the traffic that is coming in on almost an hourly basis. One of the reasons why [a former SEO figure at the Mail] left was because he couldn’t handle it. If the Mail Online was having a bad day for traffic, he’d be pulled into the office and would be torn a new one.’

[dailyfail] Charlie Brooker On The Daily Mail …

It’s hard to cheer when a newspaper closes. Even one you’re slightly scared of, like the Daily Mail. Even though the Mail isn’t technically a newspaper, more a serialised Necronomicon. In fact it’s not even printed, but scorched on to parchment by a whispering cacodemon. The Mail can never close. It can only choose to vacate our realm and return to the dominion in which it was forged; a place somewhere between shadow and dusk, beyond time and space, at the dark, howling apex of infinity. London W8 5TT.

Yet despite being a malevolent ink-and-paper succubus that will devour your firstborn – seriously, chuck a baby at a copy of the Mail, and watch as the paper roll its eyes back and swallows it whole – the Mail deserves its voice. At the Leveson inquiry, when seething Daily Mail orchestrator Paul Dacre was quizzed about Jan Moir’s notorious column on the death of Stephen Gateley, he acknowledged that she’d possibly gone too far, but added that he “would die in a ditch” to defend a columnist’s freedom of speech. Whatever you think of Dacre, that’s a brave and noble thing to say, although disappointingly he failed to indicate precisely when he was planning on doing it.

[press] Honest Daily Mail Clarifications And Corrections …

[dailyfail] Hear Me Wail … Pictures from the Daily Mail of people looking sad while standing next to or holding the thing that has made them sad.

[dailyfail] Istyosty.com … A handy proxy website which allows you to visit and link to the Daily Mail without giving them any traffic or accepting any advertising they may send your way whilst browsing.

[dailyfail] Go Look: Pictures From The Daily Mail … a weird bunch of photos collected from the Daily Mail’s website (or as I prefer to call it now – 4chan for Middle England.)

[Lord Melchard] Great interview with Stephen Fry in Guardian Unlimited. Fry on the Daily Mail: ‘There’s a name for my pain – the Daily Mail. It symbolises bourgeois fear: fear of outsiders, fear of anything different. Someone should write a book about how uniquely wrong about everything the Daily Mail has always been. It typifies everything that is most shaming about this country in terms of its lurches towards xenophobia and fear: everything in the name of the family, that horrible capital F for family. It’s become what the state was for a Stalinist: everything that is done in the name of the family is acceptable.’