On Newspapers

Working, as I do, in an industry whose three decade long history of management suicide attempts is at last bearing fruit, I try to avoid reading the wave of current stories telling me that, yes, at last, newspapers, having had their heads stuck in the oven for thirty years, have remembered to turn on the gas. Let me say it again, the only newspapers around in the future will be very upmarket, all the downmarket stuff being more readily available on the internet or in magazines made of  pulped squirrels that will be handed out free to the unemployable and the insane. Until that day of gentlemen print journalists dawns - more properly redawns - various schemes and scams will splutter and die. Here's one suggesting papers can be saved by Google, a company that has not been, in my experience, notably devoted to the culture of paper and ink. But patience, wood pulp, pigment and high intelligence will endure.