COMMENT By any standards, this was a banner week for newspapers. A rare clamour for their product left newsstands around the world sold out of the special editions publishers had laid on for Barack Obama’s inauguration.
The Washington Times tripled its usual print run, The Wall Street Journal carried its largest front page headline ever and the Los Angeles Times offered a $180 (€140, £130) package including mugs, T-shirts and copies of its post-inauguration and post-election night editions. Readers filing copies away for posterity might, however, have paused to wonder if their descendants would one day find the medium as much of an historical curiosity as the news it conveyed.
