Indeed, the World Association of Newspapers has deemed the world’s oldest newspaper (formed 1645), to be the Post-och Inrikes Tidningar of Sweden.

Although we can’t read Swedish, it appears that the site where the digital version will reside is here . Could this be the destiny of many more newspapers around the world? If so, will we then be burning wood chips to make enough electricity to read them online? Sweden does, after all, have a reputation doing things green with gusto, as if it were the California of the world.

• The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;
• The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;
• The Times is read by people who actually do run the country;
• The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
• The Financial Times is read by people who own the country;
• The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country;
• The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it already is.
• The Sun is read by people who don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.

• The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
• The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.
• The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.
• USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The Washington Post. They do, however like the smog statistics shown in pie charts.
• The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn’t have to leave L.A. to do it.
• The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.
• The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country, and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
• The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
• The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it, but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are a handicapped minority, feministic atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from any country or galaxy as long as they are Democrats.
• The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

Circulation at the nation’s largest newspapers plunged over the last six months, according to figures released today. The decline, one of the steepest on record, adds to the woes of a mature industry beset by layoffs and the possible sale of some of its flagships.

Overall, average daily circulation for 770 newspapers was 2.8 percent lower in the six-month period ending Sept. 30 than in the comparable period last year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported. Circulation for 619 Sunday papers fell by 3.4 percent.

But some papers fared much worse. The Los Angeles Times lost 8 percent of its daily circulation, and 6 percent on Sunday. The Boston Globe, owned by The New York Times Company, lost 6.7 percent of its daily circulation and almost 10 percent on Sunday.

The New York Times, one of the few major papers whose circulation held steady over the last few reporting periods, did not emerge unscathed this time: its daily and Sunday circulation each fell 3.5 percent. The Washington Post suffered similar declines.

The Wall Street Journal’s new Weekend Edition, just over a year old, lost 6.7 of its circulation from a year ago.

‘I am not an editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one’ — Mark Twain

The Los Angeles Times has a monetary value of $2.5 billion and “a balance-sheet-engorging 20% margin”. So why does Wall Street hate it? Simple: Because newspapers are a rusty industry. They have tail fins. They print lists of readers every day on the obituary page. Worse, as a class they are resolutely clueless about how to adapt to a world that is increasingly networked and self-informing. And Wall Street knows that.