Being somewhat 背が高い (se ga takai, tall), I shamelessly confess my height advantage — I stand about 188 cm — has facilitated my ability to 盗み読み (nusumi-yomi, literally "theft-read," meaning to read over other people's shoulders) on public transport.
From this 鳥瞰図 (chōkanzu, bird's-eye view), it's hard to avoid the sensational headlines in tabloids, so-called sports tabloids and magazines — although during the earliest stages of studying Japanese I was often confused by the sheer chaos of the headlines in terms of color, typefaces, font sizes and variation between the horizontal and vertical layout of the words.
The one thing about nusumi-yomi is that you learn to read fast, before the person whose reading matter you're looking at flips the page. But the trouble with reading from a distance is that you can't always make out the fine print.