And now, just a moment of unrepentant nostalgia...

I just listened to a BBC podcast of "Open Book", and this week's episode featured novels about journalism, celebrating the re-issue of Evelyn Waugh's parody of a foreign correspondent, Scoop.

Sir Max Hastings, writer and former editor of The Daily Telegraph, commented on the changes that technology has brought to our culture and to journalism.

Technology has probably made journalism a bit more boring, because nowadays I don't think you can actually accomplish as much drunk at a keyboard as you used to be able to do at a typewriter.  When I became editor of The Daily Telegraph, I got rid of all the veteran drunks  on the staff as quickly as I could. Everybody has to behave a bit better -- at least in the office. That maybe has made us a slightly more boring trade.  It may even perhaps have made us slightly less good journalists, because so often one did find, it was the disreputable men and women who did the most wonderful work.