'La Razón' forgets that it is 'La Razón'

This Sunday's front page of La Razón was truly unusual. Isabel Díaz Ayuso was on the cover, being interviewed, with the headline that read: “Sánchez is a fraud, he seeks profitability and whitewashing with the Pope's visit”. One of the subheadings was: “He doesn't go to mass, he has denied state funerals in churches and now all he lacks is a mantilla”. Evidently, Ayuso being on the front page didn't make that front page unusual. And we will agree that, from the perspective of journalistic revelation, the PSOE leader not being much of a churchgoer wasn't highly valued at Bet&Win. None of that. What was unprecedented is that the newspaper did not include its masthead on that page. Only if someone looked at the bottom left corner, turned the newspaper 90 degrees, and grabbed a magnifying glass, would they then see an inscription reminding them that it was La Razón, next to the date. The masthead is a sacred element, containing the main corporate image of a print medium. It usually only jumps out in the case of those sponsored front pages that make journalists and readers a bit of a nuisance (but which cannot be readily rejected, considering the state of the press).

That the Planeta newspaper comes out on Sunday with a front page without a masthead makes one speculate if this is the way the newspaper indicates that the interview is paid for or is part of an agreement instigated by the Community of Madrid due to the Pope's visit. In other words, that the cover is as advertising as when it is Repsol or whoever colonizes the noblest page of the day. I suppose it will eventually be discovered if there is a contract involved. If not, semiotically they have resolved it in the worst possible way, with that infinitesimal mention in the corner, right next to the solemn motto Diario independiente de información general.