Every day of this election campaign I faithfully check the front page of the Northern Territory News to gather the information I need to plug in for Crikey’s Daily Verdict so I am, let me tell you, well informed about crocodiles. The brutes are a big favourite for a page one pic and banner headline up north, but political reptiles just don’t feature.

Or they didn’t until today when I noticed the head and shoulders of Kevin 07 peering out not only from the bottom of page one but of the back page as well.

 

Surely when the NT News puts politics on page one for the first time it means that interest in the election really is heating up. Closer inspection, however, showed that the policy of keeping the paper a politics free zone continues. The esteemed editor was not one of the 50 infected by a brain virus. The Labor team had bought the page one exposure.

The one who needs to buy some page one exposure is Team Howard. The Coalition continues to be unable to take a trick with Labor again clear winners of the campaign on Tuesday.

The Daily Verdict for day 37 of the campaign is:

Coalition ALP
Television 1.01 1.64
Newspapers 0.06 0.12
Radio 0.18 0.41
Internet 0.06 0.21
TOTAL 1.31 2.38

You will find details of the way the Daily Verdict is compiled, with the help of raw material provided by our friends at Media Monitors, on the Crikey website.