There's nothing like a good celebrity death to provide an unexpected boost to the media, and they don't come much bigger than Michael Jackson.

I think you'd have to look back more than a decade to 1997 and the death of Princess Diana to find something that's similarly off-the-scale in terms of public reaction, and as Jackson was a truly global superstar his popular reach is even greater.

While the wall-to-wall media coverage of his death is wittering on about the number of tweets on the topic and websites crashing under the weight of traffic, I'm somewhat more interested in the accompanying activities that will result in print-based profit as opposed to so much hot air. One man's misfortune is, after all, another man's gain.

Jackson's demise will herald a busy weekend for print, as I'm sure the Saturday and Sunday papers will be changing their content plans and pulling together special tributes and additional pages as I type. It'll be interesting to see what appears over the next couple of days.

Then of course we have the weekly celebrity mags who will also be pulling out all the stops, and that's going to mean more pages and bigger print runs. Perhaps a commemorative poster or two as well? Whatever, it's going to involve a hell of a lot of print.

There's also a less immediate print boost. I just looked up the bestselling music CDs on Amazon UK. As of this morning the whole of the top ten was made up of Michael Jackson albums.  In fact 15 of the top 20 have now been updated to Jackson hits. I'm willing to bet the music trade is ordering re-pressings and special boxed tribute collections right now. And as it's not possible to libel the dead, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before we see a raft of new books about the king of pop, along with reprints of the existing oeuvre.

I'd also be interested to know if the programmes that would have been sold at his upcoming O2 dates are already printed and sitting in a warehouse somewhere. I'm sure they won't go to waste if so, and perhaps a commemorative "limited edition" reprint will be in order?

So, farewell then Michael Jackson. Musical genius. World-class weirdo. Putative paedophile. Printers' friend.