It vanished long ago from descriptions of people in the text of our tabloid newspapers:
FORMER Education Secretary Ruth Kelly today defended her decision to send one of her children to a £15,000-a-year private school…
VILLA boss Martin O’Neill admitted Gabor Kiraly was inconsolable…
It’s disappearing, too, from parts of the broadsheets (including my own and in defiance of what our style book says).
It goes missing regularly on radio and television. So, on Channel 4 news this evening, Jon Snow introduced a story by telling us that it was a “portrait of Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin”.
Now, dropping the definite article saves space in headlines, and was a useful device in the narrow columns of tabloid newspapers. But why is it necessary on radio or TV, where it takes no longer to say “the Ugandan tyrant”? Or in the text of stories on the web, where, supposedly, there’s an infinite amount of space?
Now it’s disappearing from books, too. Much fun has already been poked at the first line of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code:

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.

But Brown’s importing of tabloid style into book format seems to be catching. I’ve just been sent for review a book about writers’ journeys through New Zealand. In the opening chapter those whose work is cited are described as:
“British travel writer Jan Morris”
“British writer Thomas Babington Macaulay”
“Playwright and composer Noel Coward”.
“British-born Australian novelist Nevil Shute”.
What’s going to become of definite article?