The Secret of Daily Mail's Success...

Sorry to harp on about the Daily Mail website - actually, scrap that, I'm not sorry at all - but it really is becoming such a beacon of excellence for both newspapers, news websites and newspaper executives who are stuck in the pit of trying to justify everything, to everyone, all the time, even though they have no fucking clue what they're actually talking about.

I give you Mail Online publisher Martin Clarke, and his recent address at the Society of Editors Conference.

He said: "Mail Online has succeeded because it does what newspapers have always done, it tells fascinating stories clearly with great headlines, punchy words and brilliant pictures."

Let's take this one step at a time...

"Mail Online has succeeded because...":

* "fascinating stories": Really? Where? A quick look today reveals 13, yes, 13 celebrity-based stories in the top half of the Mail homepage. There are nine 'news' stories in the main section.

* "great headlines": Again, really? Headlines today include: 'Rent boy quizzed by police over claims that husband of honeymoon murder victim paid him for sex sessions', 'Big freeze returns tonight with EIGHT inches of snow and temperatures of -10C on the way, prompting fears it will eclipse the winter of 1962-3' and 'He has an army of liberal millionaire supporters bit WikiLeaks boss is STILL trying to raise £240,000 in cash for his bail'.

Yeah, fuckin' fascinating those Martin...

* "punchy words": See above.

* "brilliant pictures": See below - I'll let you judge.



Now, to all those executives now knocking one off over Clarke's genius thinking and incredible figures on Mail Online, I give you the response.

* "Please, stop wallowing in a vat of your own clueless thinking and realise that whacking celebrity names in headlines, along with words like "rent boy" and "sex sessions" (preferably together) does not indicate some kind of genius online thinking, it indicates a blatant attempt to produce plastic figures based on wankers who know nothing about anything reading shit stories."

If that is the future, then you can stick it right up your arse and we should all quit now.

Thank you Mr Clarke for killing our industry. Still, you'll be long fucking dead with millions in the bank when the final person left trying to preserve some sort of integrity is handed a P45.

Still, at least he has some sense of how shit his own site is.

"I don't think we'll ever win any web design awards."

No shit Sherlock.