'Newspapers are fantastic pieces of technology'

Observer political journalist Andrew Rawnsley in The Word: "This is not a fashionable point of view but newspapers are fantastic technology. You can fold them, tear bits off and give them to your mum, they are cheap..they are sustainable technology. The problem is a generation has been taught to believe that first music and now news ought to be free. If you put that in terms of "why is two quid a reasonable price for a pretty indifferent hot chocolate from Starbucks, but not for half a million quality words on a Sunday?" they get it instantly. We as journalists have to be clear with the readers that this stuff does not come cheap and it is important."

• Also in The Word, Rawnsley says that he was told in an attempt to pre-empt his book on Gordon Brown, someone in Number 10 planted untrue bad stories about the prime minister's behaviour in the Mail on Sunday which could then be denied. Rawnsley says: "The prime minister has to stand up and deny allegations that his own people have planted in the right-wing press, supposedly in order to defend him. I thought, whoever did that, you really have wandered into an episode of The Thick Of It."