Newspapers are making news of their own for all the wrong reasons. The industry in general is having a torrid time, with the regional press particularly badly affected. A recent Newsnight feature that preceded the release of the Digital Britain report said that 60 titles have already disappeared in the past year, along with 1,000 jobs.

Now that Digital Britain is out no doubt there will be dismay at the OFT's wrong-headed decision not to relax merger rules for regional publishers. Inevitably there will be more casualties as a result.

Some of the regional newspaper publishers' problems are of their own making, though. They've taken readers for granted and expected them not to notice when inferior quality editorial is served up. My parents live in the midlands and have been avid readers of the local papers for as long as I can remember. They read them from cover to cover. But my dad took to calling the Nottingham Evening Post "the Nottingham Glitch & Clone" more than a decade ago.

Meanwhile, a recent report from Moody's Investors Service in the USA said newspapers were spending a disproportionate amount of money on print and distribution, and called on them to reduce these costs by outsourcing print production, thus diverting funds into content and other technologies. Brilliant idea from the big brains at Moody's, however I'm not sure that I see an eager queue of potential print suppliers - or investors - eager to either take over or build newspaper printing plants.