Once again on the decline of the press

When the Independent started, one of their founding principles was that they would not cover the royal stories on which nearly every other newspaper wasted ink by the gallon (apart from the Morning Star who reported one of the royal weddings of that era with a one-line item saying that "traffic in central London was disrupted yesterday").

I was dismayed to see in Saturday's copy that the Prince Harry story, which could also be reported in one line, "Frivolous young man of Hanoverian descent wears swastika armband at fancy dress party", seemed to their editor to be worth three whole pages. I'd expect this from the Times, who left their sense of proportion behind along with several thousand employees when they moved to Wapping, but thought the Independent might still remember its origins.