The Frankfurter Allgemeine discovers photography and I discover Malenkov

In the clearest sign yet that the world is about to come to an end, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung--the grayest newspaper I know of on this planet--is going to start running color photos on the front page every day starting Friday. ("Inviting, fresh, clear," the paper claims of its new look.)

The FAZ did run front-page photos in the past on especially big news days. There's a collection of some old front pages here, and it's fascinating to see what merited a photo: 9/11 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, of course, but also the death of Pope John Paul, the establishment of diplomatic relations between Bonn and Moskow in 1955, the Four Power Conference in Berlin in 1954, and my personal favorite, the Fall of Malenkov. I actually hadn't known that some guy named Malenkov had briefly been in charge of the Soviet Union between Stalin and Kruschev. Clearly, I don't read the Frankfurter Allgemeine regularly enough.