It's so low-tech it sounds like an early All Fools' joke, but the Los Angeles Times is upbeat about its "interactive" Oscars preview.

There's a tradition in doing something unusual ahead of the annual Academy Awards.

This year, assistant managing editor Michael Whitley says the aim was to do something that replicated the interactivity of a mobile phone.

A report on the Poynter website tells how he has become "borderline obsessed" with ideas to create motion and interactivity in printed pages. Perhaps an image that would change with a swipe or a click.

That wasn't going to happen, but what they came up with for the Sunday Calendar front was a page where the image would change. So when you held up the cover featuring three rows of Oscar statues, it changed - as if by magic (or mobile) - to show them clothed in the style of the best picture nominees.

With the hoo-hah of yesterday's presentations past, we can now reveal the secret behind Sunday's illusion.

It's called show-through: thanks to increasingly thin newsprint, a second image printed in register on page two appears when the cover is held up to the light.