Should I worry about...

working in a terminally mature industy which is gushing money down the drain, hoping - Mr Macawber - that something other than making pennies off webpage banner adverts will turn up? Guido sobering this morning. Greenslade also gloomy reading yesterday. Sir Compton is aware of the irony of sampling these prognostications on the internet.

In summary, Times Newspapers is losing a million a week but helped by News Group Newspapers (Sun/NoW) which is merely showing a decline in profits (The Times has almost always lost money in recent years but The Sunday Times used to make an absolute pile); Guardian/Observer losing £83,000 a day (yowie!); Indy thanatoid and closing it would be a mercy to all parties; DMGT and Trinity Mirror wheezing under burden of provincials; Express/Star just a pension fund for "Dirty" Desmond; Maily and Sunday Failygraph anyone's guess but they are not really in the news business anymore and might as well open a cattery in the upstairs acres at Victoria; FT should show a small profit overall, helped by subscription website.

And yet why worry? From a purely selfish, or domestically selfish, point of view, it is simply a question of the dead tree press being kept going until the young Valences are off the payroll - probably 10 years maximum. It is very hard to see the print media, however good and surprising, lasting much beyond that, but then maybe a career working remotely on comment moderation or redacting for websites - coz even in cyberspace the rough note takers write too much - will develop or can be carved out. Self self self should concentrate on savings/AVCs and contemplation of a life earning and spending much less. Query growing potatoes and keeping a few chickens/pigs?

What won't die is the need for editing, because without it no one will bother to read anything - and God knows there aren't many people reading this.