There’s a stereotype that people from Melbourne tend to popularise that Melbourne and Sydney are somehow different: that Melbourne is cultural, arty etc and Sydney is a little superficial. Here in Sydney, we don’t give a second thought to any perceived difference… I mean, why would you bother?

While looking at the Sydney Morning Herald today I observed some interesting similarities and differences, in terms of what readers in both cities actually find interesting in their newspapers.

The most viewed story in Sydney concerned Australia’s controversial Miss Universe entrant, Erin McNaught, who has been handpicked to appear on one of America’s top TV talkshows with billionaire Donald Trump, while in Melbourne, it was a story about Oxana Malaya who learnt as a young child when she was brought up by a pack of dogs on a rundown farm near the village of Novaya Blagoveschenka in Ukraine.

The big issues for readers of “The Age” included the weather (surprise!) as Victorians awoke to the chilliest morning for almost 12 months, today, with temperatures falling well below zero in cold spots around the state. They were also interested in the story of a man who cut off his own penis in a drunken bet, and the discovery through Google Earth of a small-scale model of a piece of territory in China complete with snow-topped mountains, streams and valleys and the

Readers of the “Sydney Morning Herald” were also interested in the Google Earth story. There was also a big story about a stabbing, as an 18-year-old man was in hospital with a 10 centimetre cut to his throat after it was slashed with a knife in Sydney’s east this morning. Unlike our parochial cousins down south, Sydney-siders also had an interest in the Middle East crisis.

Both cities were very interested in the news that Jessica Rowe is pregnant and that speaks volumes too!

Goodness knows what I’ll see on the front page of “The West Australian” tomorrow.