I remember you took a lot of stick for starting NMN but I’ve always felt that in the world of business it’s dog eat dog. Who was to say that the strike might not have resulted in the closure of one of those other papers and then NMN might at least have there to offer some work to those who were laid off.

I’ll probably get crucified for having typed such heresy, but I do think the business world and the unions are actually just two big power blocs, waving their swords at each other. It’s all very macho indeed. The once ‘pure’ notion of a union as defender of the underdog worker just no longer seems to make sense.

I heartily despise Thatcher for what she did to the unions (and her son Tony Blair too for that matter) but even I can see that once any body gets power it begins to abuse it, and we passed that point long ago with the unions.

We need unions, of course we do, but we must be as wary of them as we are of the capitalist bosses.

Which is a long-winded way of saying I thought you had every right to have a go with NMN, doomed though it probably was from day one.

I also agree that the PLU tendency is dangerous, especially when assessing the relative merits of what lies behind vs. what lies ahead… which is of course what I do almost constantly!

In fact I’m not actually as angry about my current career hiatus (or end) as I perhaps sound. I’ve pretty much accepted that the past is the admittedly glorious past, but that’s, er, it.

I also owe you a lot, because you gave me a break at New Music News which, although a controversial venture, I thought was a bold move.

I can well understand your anger and your perspective on this brave new digital world must inevitably be a harsher one than mine. I hope I’d have enough grit and determination to wash dishes or sweep roads if there was nothing else even if, like you, I’d hate doing it. In fact, I’d probably do all the things you’re doing just to keep the brain ticking over and the bills paid.

It must be particularly galling when you have, as you do, a wide range of abilities that you can’t seem to get used. All I can do is scribble.

Those of us whose backs aren’t yet against the wall would do well to remember that we’re lucky gits and not get too smug and try not to write entirely from a PLU perspective. Unfortunately, our own experience is inevitably what we draw on when we write.

Thanks Mark for reminding me of all of this. I remember once having a discussion with a genuinely lovely old lady of my acquaintance (a lifelong Daily Mail reader) who told me in all sincerity that there were no poor people in Britain now.

I’m evidently more like her than I realised.

I’m an old bloke too, and maybe that’s why I regularly write to the ‘papers (and mags) – old habits die hard! And whilst I commend your embrace of all that’s new and shiny media-wise, I don’t share your optimism about revenue models adequately benefitting content providers – as we must now be called.

My income from scribbling has dwindled to a thin trickle this past 18 months and for every pitch I make to a mag or paper, they get fifty others from both wizened old hacks like us and, more critically, newly qualified media studies graduates and recently sacked staffers – both of whom have inherent advantages over us lot. Hey, and maybe their pitches are better?

I’m washing dishes a few nights a week for a few quid and doing tons of voluntary work just to keep my brain working… oh yeah, and scrawling Blogs! Haven’t had an consultancy work – my bread and butter for five years – this past 12 months, which just show how the industry is contracting.

I also got a spam from Freekly and it didn’t really impress, but in any case, what do they pay: £25/500 words?!

I certainly can’t quibble with your other point, Mark, about the cashflow problems inherent in digital publishing, but I suspect it’s the wave of the immediate future and we have to learn how to adapt or we will be swept away.

Maybe the recently announced Freekly will help, but even if it doesn’t, that’s the kind of initiative we need to be showing if we’re going to weather the changes ahead.

I am by nature an optimist, so I believe that things will find their own level and their own way of functioning and I also believe that most of us, me included, probably can’t even imagine what that way will be right now.

What I can’t believe is that the kind of collected wisdom and memory-bank that we wizened old hacks represent will be thrown aside completely. There will be a place for most of us if we hang in there and don’t just automatically reject new ways of working and new means of distribution.

Now, i’m an old bloke, so I’m off to bed.

Large circulation general newspapers will almost certainly vanish. Look at us. We’re all busily putting our feelings down here and communicating regularly with each other because we have a lot in common – we’ve found a community that feels more like our own than the rather disparate readership of any given newspaper. When did any of us last write to a newspaper?

Everything will become more targetted; our prejudices will be catered to by minority digital publications. It’s scary but it’s likely true.

Maybe there’s a way we can work together to think beyond the simple knee-jerk reaction of wanting to preserve what we’ve always had, and try to work out how to live with and improve what looks to be inevitable.

The genie of digital distribution of information cannot ever be put back into the bottle.

We must to work out how we can live with it, influence it, temper it, come to terms with it, and possibly even come to trust it as a reliable source of information.

Of course, that’s a damn sight harder than just whining about how awful it all is and it probably depends on the least likely thing of all – our society becoming responsible for its own actions.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. Or am I?