As always, I enjoyed reading this great polemic from Oz Politics blogger Andrew Elder about the demise of the News of the World, and it sparked some thoughts — this really is a watershed moment in the history of printed newspapers. Maybe the beginning of the end. Elder sums it up:

This really is the point that denizens of the journosphere cannot face: the biggest-selling publication in the English-speaking world disappeared and nobody (except those who worked drew income from there) missed it. That is the difference between a genuinely popular and authentic piece of communal life, and the easy-come-easy-go approach to the withdrawal of any other sort of discontinued product line.

He’s right. Imagine if a shock decision was made to close a much-loved institution such as Liverpool Football Club, the Brisbane Broncos, the National Gallery, or Yellowstone National Park. Mass fury. It’d be no exaggeration to say that Liverpool or Broncos fans would be rioting in the streets. National Gallery or Yellowstone enthusiasts would be chaining themselves to government buildings in protest.

Likewise, try to imagine if a similar decision was taken with a service that’s genuinely useful to people, such as Facebook, Twitter or Google? Widespread consternation and annoyance. It’d be different from the above examples, but people would nevertheless be furious. Furthermore, an army of coders would be hard at work creating carbon copy services to step into the breach.

But as Elder notes, the single biggest newspaper in the English-speaking world disappears overnight, and from its readers, there’s nothing. There’s a lot of discussion about it, but it’s mostly just other journalists lamenting the loss to the “free press” (have they ever read the News of the World?!?). There is to date very little evidence that actual readers even care about the newspaper — no petitions to Murdoch begging a rethink, no tribute websites, nothing. And if they don’t care about the NotW, with its circulation of 2.6 million, would they care about The Mail on Sunday (1.9 million), the Sunday Mirror (1.1 million), the Herald Sun (480,000), or The Sydney Morning Herald (210,000)?

You may well argue that this is specific to the News of the World: no one is going to lament the loss of this disgraced, tarnished brand. I’m not sure that’s the reason. By the time of his death, Michael Jackson was one of the most tarnished brands in global entertainment, thanks to accusations of child s-xual abuse. His memorial service was watched by 1 billion people worldwide, and his music shot back to the top of the charts.

And let’s not forget that in the past few years several major metro newspapers, with pristine reputations and large readerships, have disappeared to no discernible outcry whatsoever. This has been mainly in the US, and some were the only title in a one newspaper town (Newspaper Death Watch keeps a close eye on this).

So commodified is the news business that from a consumers’ perspective, a closed newspaper is more like a brand of chewing gum that’s disappeared, to be easily substituted for another brand. Before the NotW’s disappearance the UK Sunday tabloid market had a total circulation of 7 million. Last week, that stood at 6.8 million. In other words, all but 200,000 of the NotW’s 2.6 million readers have been hoovered up by other titles. Now ask yourself: if the filmmakers had decided to just stop making Harry Potter films after #5, would filmgoers have said “oh well” and migrated straight to the Twilight series?

This is not the way newspapers like to think about themselves or their readers. They like to give presentations to advertisers about their “fiercely loyal” readers with their “shared values”; a “family” (I’ve given many such presentations myself). They don’t like to face the reality: people buy their paper purely for football results or celeb gossip, and the TV guide. Maybe they like one or two superstar columnists (yes, such as Andrew Bolt) but everything else — i.e. the news — they can just as easily get elsewhere and barely notice the difference.

And can you blame them? After all, it’s not only consumers who don’t seem to care. Murdoch shut down the biggest paper in his empire overnight, purely to improve his chances of successfully bidding for control of BSkyB. A pawn in a bigger (failed) strategy. In due course, News International will relaunch a Sun on Sunday, wiping from the slate the NotW and it’s 168-year heritage.

The news business is now so commodified, the product so undifferentiated, the content so undistinguished, that apart from a few sentimental journos, no one even cares when they die.