Didn’t want to let this one go without a raised eyebrow. A feature appeared in Sunday's New York Times about oligarch Alexander Lebedev and his plans to purchase British tabloid The Evening Standard. Nothing particularly strange or funny about that, but the editors did their best to make the piece utterly baffling. To start with, there’s the picture.

It’s a photo of an old man selling The Evening Standard on the streets of London. Get it? That’s the tabloid Lebedev is about to buy! But you’re forgiven if you thought the story would have something to do with Margaret Thatcher resigning. I sure did.

Even better is the photo’s Riddler-approved caption: “AS ENGLISH AS TEA The tabloid in 1990 (when its future owner was K.G.B.).” I assume this is a tortured attempt to make us think the photo was chosen deliberately rather than in a last-minute archive search. This made the prime spot on the site’s front page, mind you.

Then there’s the title. In going out of their way to make feature headlines straightforward—no puns or misleading flourishes—the Times sometimes gets very cryptic. “To Fleet Street By Way of the K.G.B.” is a fine example. Apparently, the name Alexander Lebedev wasn’t sexy enough to merit inclusion in the headline (or a photo), and I presumed they moved him to the lead paragraph of the article.

I presumed wrong! The lead paragraph name-checks John Le Carré and reminds us of the old adage, “once KGB, always KGB,” but does not name Lebedev. Ditto the second paragraph, which revisits the highly relevant Alexander Livtinenko poisoning saga from 2006. And the third paragraph, without naming Lebedev, builds him up as a shadowy ex-KGB officer who “runs with a different crowd.” The oligarch is finally unmasked in the fourth paragraph as “Aleksandr (don’t call me an oligarch) Lebedev.”

Does the Times still feel it needs to hold our hand as it explains that there is such a thing as a Russian oligarch buying something in Britain? A tabloid at that? Okay, eyebrow lowered.

To Fleet Street By Way of the K.G.B. [The New York Times]

Photo -- The New York Times.