Trust me on this one – there will be no weeping and gnashing of teeth in the streets of Bradford with the news that the Financial Times Germany (FTD) is to cease production, with the loss of 320 jobs.

However, despite the indifference of the denizens of my adoptive home town, this is a significant event – another milestone in the decline and fall of the newspaper industry which is happening on a global scale.

What makes this especially interesting, though, is the analysis by Spiegel which hastens to assert that the entire blame cannot placed at the door of the internet.

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Edited by user 23 November 2012 12:50:17(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Yes a happy troupe, the media revue bar strumpets all - bumping and grinding along on the bottom.

The sales go down and the reportage goes the same way. Newspapers, its journalists cut from the same cloth as the figures they always write about - same old, same old. The print media circus, is ably and stoutly assisted by its sisters and brothers in world of TV land, where everyone is paid extraordinary amounts of money to mouth platitudinous drivel - auto-cutie world loves the fourth estate and so it goes, if you don't ask, you'll never hear what you don't want to hear.

Heads in the sand lads and lasses and they still get paid?

I'd put this down to the Germans haveing good taste.

The FT has to be the worst financial paper on the planet, all their staff are if nor hard line commies then soft ones, they hate everything to do with money and the makeing of it and it shows.

They have also been an indefatigable supporter of the EU and all it's insanities, it is perhaps a sign of the times that they are doing so badly, just like their beloved EU.

Bit ironic that a financial newspaper should go kaput, innit. Shows what they know!

I have a bottle of champagne in the fridge for the day the Guardian goes out of business

OT: Telegraph Crossword

That was my main port of call as well, that and the one in The Times. Only then would I read the news. But I haven't done a crossword in years. I can't remember the last time — because I can't remember the last time I bought a newspaper.

What I liked best about them is the occasional sheer delight in the surprise one gets when the answer comes magically with no conscious effort, as if one had nothing whatsoever to do with it. "Where TF did come from?!" Only then does one check to see if it makes full sense and fits the bill exactly. It's a great feeling. I love it.

Then there was an occasion on holiday once where I spent a couple of hours on one in The Times getting nowhere while I was a passenger in the back seat of a friend's car in France — nothing. I tried again later in the day for maybe 15 or 20 minutes — again nothing. (I have to add that this was highly unusual.) I forgot about it after that but noticed it in the pile of papers about a couple of days later. I glanced at it intending only to throw it away. Then it all came out in a great rush — the whole thing. Bang bang bang. Just like that. Done. Wow! That was really satisfying!

I do miss them though. Hey, I think I'll go and search one out now for a nice bit of displacement activity. Y'know, take a break from all the intense hating I've been busy doing lately. It's not easy being a full-time hater. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself and that my attempts to improve my hating skills are under-appreciated.

Which reminds me: I cannot for the life of me understand what would prompt anyone to construct a sentence juxtaposing the phrase "feel sorry for" with the word "Cameron". I'd be only too happy to read that he was dead, preferably by the hand of an ordinary Englishman who'd had enough of his shit, and that he got away with it.

But back to crosswords. In the sixties, the one in The Times was full of a certain kind of clue you don't see these days, Dank sei Gott. [Gesundheit!] That was the literary quotation type, almost invariably from Shakespeare IIRC. Typically you had to supply the missing word. A useless, stupid sort of clue. You either knew it or you didn't. If you didn't then all you could do was attempt a pretty much context-free wild guess which turned the thing into something down at the level of throwing dice with nothing to work on. I'm sure the arty-farty literary types "reading English at Kings" loved them, but they were useless for us plumbers reading proper subjects. Actually, very much just like University Challenge was when that nice Bamber Gascoigne was running it — a total waste of time. Most of the time you couldn't answer even a single question if you were a typical hard-sciences type and pursued healthy outdoor physical activities for relaxation rather than going pasty-faced in spending hours at the life-dissipating non-activity involved in boning up on effete literary junk. (Ha ha! Just teasing — not all of it is that bad.) It's much better and far more balanced these days with Paxman, but he wouldn't have had anything to do with that as he's a farty himself. Hey, I have a confession: I actually like Paxman! Yes, it's true. I don't really understand it myself. But he can still be an extremely irritating, pushy, lightweight smugoid a lot of the time. I'm surprised no one has thumped him yet.

But back to crosswords again. I got a clue wrong once.

Yeah, really, I did. :)

Most of them seem to be adult comics and they've been going that way for years, well before the interweb. Radio and then television must have dented their news market. Pages and pages of sport, celebrity drivel about people who are famous for being famous, pages and pages of health related tripe. Even the broadsheets are full of celebrity guff and health blather.

I'd guess that a few will continue as comics for a long time.

There's been a definite skimpiness in the news content, regurgitating stories with no investigation, topping and tailing press releases.

Local newspapers went through a big transformation when the free ad rags came out in the 70s.

The internet was a disruptive technology the newspapers never knew quite what to make of. Ignore it, drop the print edition, go behind a paywall, try to make money from advertising.