The front pages reviewed at midnight: Wednesday 15 December 2010

Is anyone else a little bored by the whole Julian Assange trial stuff? The guy is just the face of an organisation, not the organisation itself; if you shot Ronald McDonald a 16 year old would still flip your burgers. Well the Guardian aren’t bored yet as they lead with him. The Telegraph has a fascinating piece about savings levels, the Mail has an evocative if slightly tasteless piece about the Swedish suicide bomber and the Indy gets its first scoop for a few weeks.

Twitter takes over the courts…

Today, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind, the judge in the Julian Assange case has said that journalists can tweet throughout the trial providing “it’s quiet and doesn’t disturb anything.” This case really is landmark in the future of journalism.

This Wikileak shows it has taken control of the press

Wikileaks no longer needs newspapers, newspapers need it.

This was not always the case. When the website first started publishing leaked documents it found it hard to get coverage in the ‘traditional’ media and the website’s founder Julian Assange is hardly a big fan of newspapers. For the first year the papers and the website had a mutually hostile relationship, with occasional bits of coverage the exception rather than the rule.