"Honestly, I've wheelie bin nowhere..."

Interesting column in today’s Media Guardian by Peter Wilby, pointing to the Daily Mail’s loosening grasp on 1) reality 2) its readers.

So frenzied has the need become to be both vitriolic and parochial in equal measure The Mail has been picking increasingly surreal fights in recent times. First it was ‘The Internet’ giving everybody cancer and now it is the ‘Not In My Front Yard’ campaign against “plastic monstrosities blighting our streets and gardens" …or wheelie bins to you and me.

And of course, all of this is played alongside the incessant diatribe against swan-eating, benefit cheating, queue jumping immigrants.

The Telegraph served up a poignant reminder recently – in the shape of its investigation into MPs expenses – that newspapers can still stand tall in the face of potentially terminal encroachment from the online and social media worlds. It did so by gauging the likely mood of the nation to a piece of content perfectly. Of course we’d pay to find out how these MPs have been fleecing us all.

But if the papers misjudge what their readers want – as Wilby suggests The Mail has done over wheelie bins – then the inevitable but in no way immediate prognosis can only be expedited.