In which the Major veers towards news and Mr Day steps in to save the day ...

The pond was inordinately grateful that the reptiles let Mark Day out from behind the paywall this day …

It seems that the Major had delegated most of the important business of the day, with some reptiles waging a fierce campaign against social media in all its evil forms, and Mr Day given the job of looking at the glass half full (it helps when looking at this kind of glass to have first drunk half of the medicinal brandy in the glass) ...

Hmm, the pond hadn't expected Mr Day to be singing the praises of Fairfax, when he might have been explaining how the reptile papering of airports had led to a tremendous increase in lizard Oz circulation …

Was it only last year that the reptiles withdrew from the newspaper circulation audit, effectively killing it off, and substituting humbug circulation figures, pumping up the digital… and making it impossible to sort out the conflation of print with digital ...which was perhaps just as well given the sort of figures that turned up in Mumbrella in February this year ...

No wonder the Major took leave from the job of boosting newspapers to do a different kind of boost involving actual reporting ...

There's more, but the pond feels it's fair dibs to leave the Major alone in his celebrations.

While the pond routinely mocks the reptiles, there are some journalists - who deal with news rather than fatuous opinion, and who draw attention to matters needing attention - that continue to do good things… and the matters on Palm Island needed the reporting they got …

So the pond reverted to Mr Day for a final bout celebrating tree killing editions … though it has to be said in the neck of the woods where the pond walks the street, it's possible to bump into any number of young people walking around like zombies staring at screens, or even driving cars while texting.

It's also entirely impossible to find anyone carrying or reading a newspaper, with the few remaining newsagents in the district long ago declared an endangered species …

The pond doesn't like it, but they're young and they know not what they do, and getting them to change is beyond the pond, and … sad to say, the glass half full reptiles …

Take it away Mr Day, but please, whatever you do, the pond knows you'll refrain from citing the humbug EMMA figures as a justification for print, won't you?

After all, looking at those figures and finding in them print redemption these days is a bit like ferreting through chook entrails and claiming you've found the onion muncher's  precioussss …

Depending on the way you look at it, audiences are either incredibly strong, or struggling. The debate around which data is accurate rages on. PHD’s Formosa Morgan says the Saturday and Sunday titles should prevail in the medium term, but she isn’t optimistic about the Monday to Friday. “Although in an age where fake news is somehow getting traction, maybe readers will turn back to the trusted print versions. Probably not, but you’ve got to hope that they instead turn to trusted online news outlets,” she says. (Mumbrella  here).

Probably not …

Well, the pond is certainly prepared to trust anyone who doesn't lead with EMMA as a justification for print hanging around …

Oh dear, in the end, it was just another promotional piece for the lizard Oz …

Major Mitchell might be proud, but pitching your tent around a magazine titled Mansion peddling real estate sounds dangerously high end and 'leetist to the pond …and most likely to attract wheeler dealers ready to use all the online features in the digital edition

The pond is pleased to help the business model, which is dangerously AFR …

(pdf here).

But can we just shut up all the wretched reptiles still rabbiting on about the 'leets? They're ruining things for your business model … perhaps you could start with the Oreo …

As for being not dead yet, we all die some time or other, and every so often, the pond still bumps into people furiously explaining how vinyl has never passed, and how books are returning, and how VHS is daily being streamed on YouTube …

The online exchanges the pond has about the joys of the analogue world are always stimulating in a digital way ...

And so to a few helpful cartoons …