One of Rupert Murdoch’s executives gave a speech here in Oz the other day noting that the US newspaper is a dying breed. The main reason was not the blogosphere, he claimed, but the fact that the newspapers of the US are so boring. Really the reaosn that newspapers all over are losing readers is that they are too left wing.

I live in the most affluent part of Sydney. An area that votes 70% conservative and has done since the Flood. Yet the idiots at the local newspaper have made their rag more and more left-wing in the last year. The result is that their circulation advertising revenue is down as social class A readers desert them in droves.

The answer is therefore simple: papers will survive if they become more right wing, because that is the default social position. As Margaret Thatcher once said: “the facts of life are conservative.”