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But now advertisers have deserted us en masse. And so the industry now faces the challenge of persuading readers, not only to read us rather than the thousands of other alternatives that are now available online, but to pay something closer to the full shot for something they have been used to getting at a heavy discount, historically, or more recently for free.

Can we do it? I don’t know, though I suspect much of the recent pessimism is overdone. We talk of a post-literate society, but in fact there has only ever been a minority of people who read anything. And there has only ever been a minority of them who read anything worth reading. I see no reason to think that minority of a minority is likely to disappear; and, so far as they value good writing, they should be willing to pay for it. The question is whether we will provide it.

That, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter. We can talk all we want about the role of social media, or Google, but in the end it comes down to whether we offer a compelling enough product to attract willing customers. And if we are honest with ourselves we will concede that all too often we have not.

The classic newspaper model has substituted quantity for quality, in hopes that if we threw enough at the reader, some of it would stick long enough for them to peruse the ads. The ratio of cheap sentiment, pack-following and repetition to the fearless investigative reporting that is supposedly our raison d’être is not flattering to our case.