The ‘news’ (can news about news actually be called news?) that the hit rate on the Times website has fallen by 66% since Uncle Rupe’s paywall idea was implemented is no real surprise. Falling circulation and the lack of people buying traditional print are cited as the reason behind this brave move, but the Guardian and Telegraph are still available for free, so in reality, it is braver than you would think. As long as google news aggregates the feeds that still exist in the clear, then News International are doomed to fail in this rather crude attempt at market-making. Any online presence, be it newspapers or otherwise, relies on google’s monetisation of the site for income – does this mean then that the Dirty Digger is not getting enough footfall in the first place to sustain the online presence? Has he perhaps failed to learn the lesson in the myspace debacle and is having another go at imposing a fiscal structure on this herd of cats we call the internet?

As to falling revenues in print at Wapping, maybe this is what happens when you substitute news in a paper with the relentless chasing of “news nouveau” – this endless reporting on vacuous celebrity culture and lifestyle, which exists only because the redtops are too lazy to get proper stories written up. Wapping, meet the Ouboros.

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