Last night Guido found himself at the Media Society’s awards ceremony where the luvvies of the metropolitan elite had gathered to spend the night congratulating themselves. The evening was dedicated to the hyperbolic glorification of the Guardian’s pursuit of the hacking story and the work by their investigative journalist Nick Davies.

Steve Coogan was the compere, telling some fantastically foul-mouthed jokes about Paul Dacre, Louise Mensch and James Murdoch. Tom Watson took to the podium to trowel on the praise thickly with a flowery speech about the heroism of Guardianistas. Sir Harry Evans hammed it up on stage and continued his decades-long feud with Murdoch, calling  Rupert a liar at Leveson. It went so over-the-top it was over the horizon when the Media Society’s president, American-born Geraldine Sharpe Newton, compared the hacking saga to Watergate, casting Nick Davies and the Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger in the famous leading roles. There was a lot of talk about the “fear of taking on Murdoch”, it seems clear to Guido that far from being fearful the Guardian has enjoyed itself immensely pursuing Murdoch.

As if all that that was not enough to digest, before dessert we got Henry Porter going over the same rhetorical ground as previous speakers until he named Stephen Glover, William Shawcross, Toby Young and Boris Johnson on a roll call of “shameful” Murdoch media cheerleaders in comparison to the moral giant that is his editor. Rusbridger himself gave a dignified acceptance speech, which depending on your taste was either too knowingly smug or, as Tom Watson claimed, fine since he had “earned the right to smugness”. Rusbridger did at one point self-deprecatingly suggest he would perhaps be better cast as an older Harry Potter rather than in a British movie version of Watergate.

It was all getting a bit too much for Guido to bear when Nick Davies came on, he was amusing and authentic with a more down-to-earth style acceptance speech. Then Nick changed gear and said that the Mirror and the Mail were as culpable in their criminality as News International, that it was a “fluke” that the Mirror was not in the dock too. Later in the Corinthia bar, speaking over a brandy, one of the lawyers at the heart of the hacking saga said that Davies was wrong about the Mirror not being in the dock. Forthcoming legal cases will put the Mirror squarely in the dock – it seems it is true that one day you’re the cock of the walk, the next a feather duster…

What a remarkable similarity between Bill Swanson’s letter published in the Telegraph on the 16th and Andrew Pierce’s column four days later.

UPDATE: This is not the first time Andrew Pierce has done this.

See also: Andrew Pierce Goes All Hari On Us and An Open Letter to Paul Dacre.

Guido’s Sunday column is now online here.

Today the industry trade body for the dead tree press, the Newspaper Marketing Association, accepted the thesis and announced it is renaming itself “Newsworks”, dropping dead entirely the word “newspaper”. CEO Rufus Olins says “We need to start thinking differently… It’s all about newsbrands, about delivering content through a range of platforms.” Guido thinks we can only measure the strength of news brands in terms of their mindshare. The broadsheets – Guardian, Times, Indy – all lose money and are more akin to vanity publishing than profit motivated businesses. It is about who they reach and how much they influence their consumers.

As the news industry and more importantly – from a financial perspective – the advertising industry comes to realise that online and print consumers are fungible, reality starts to hit home. In under a decade this blog has become as strong a news brand in our field in terms of readership and mindshare as the New Statesman, hell we’re part way through a reverse-takeover of The Spectator. The great thing for consumers is that because of low barriers to entry, we have an ever more competitive, pluralist, thriving free market in news. Without slaughtering trees…

Analysis of "Acropolis Now!" in the 50p #DailyStarSunday, No. 11s Big Mac growth strategy, we reveal Jeremy Hunt's new SpAd plus lots more—
Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) May 20, 2012

The switch-over makes today’s column by the Telegraph’s Deputy Editor about Steve Hilton versus the civil service all the more interesting:

 ”Without Mr Hilton, how much will survive? His [Dave's] proposed public sector reforms, let alone his ideas for slashing the Civil Service, are likely to stall..”

Slashing the civil service doesn’t look to be stalling this afternoon…

Private Eye                                  Guido Fawkes

Sir, I wonder if any of your readers have noticed the striking resemblance between this week’s front cover and our own site four day ago. Could they by any chance be related?

Guido column: What job is @Tom_Watson after? She says she is a "a bit UKIP-py", Nadine fights back in the 50p #DailyStarSunday—
Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) May 13, 2012

Ed (or his speechwriters) have clearly been reading the Daily Star Sunday – his Boris gag was lifted straight from it:

NOTICEABLY, the Prime Minister did not pop in to the party to congratulate the only Tory success of the elections. Just as well, since Boris, when he finally arrived, thanked supporters who, he joked, beat “the rain, the BBC, that Budget and the endorsement of David Cameron”.

If you missed that, and the rest of Guido’s Sunday column, then you can read it online here.