My question is why bother? The paywall killed The Times — it is now stuck in a backwater of “dying off old men”. Meanwhile The Guardian and The Mail leapt the online barrier and surged ahead in people reached.

The days when everyone took their views from The Thunderer are long gone. News is no longer delivered by a few national Newspapers who could print and deliver faster than anyone, hired the best people and were closer to power. Papers like yours reacted to the web by paying journalists less and pensioning off the big celebrity writers, rather than building their brands. Now we are left with a slow, generic me-too, hoping to deliver the eyeballs of laggards to intrusive advertising.

If newspapers in general, and The Times in particular, died off tomorrow few people would miss them and even fewer would mourn. We now get our news from experts in the field direct and from expert writers who entertain for free.

This looks like too little, too late.