Media Quotes of the Week: From Trump's sneering contempt for reporters is pathetic to newspaper sales and ads collapse in Coronavirus lockdown

Piers Morgan on MailOnline on Trump's treatment of reporters at his press briefing: "Time and again reporters asked him perfectly legitimate questions about his administration’s handling of this crisis, and time and again Trump furiously abused, denounced and dismissed them with sneering contempt. He ranted, raved, mocked and derided in such an appalling manner that by the the time he finished, the hashtag #TrumpMeltdown was No1 trending topic on Twitter in America. This was worse than just a meltdown.This was the most undignified and pathetic display I have ever seen from any world leader, let alone the President of the United States – in the middle of a global crisis. And where once I could occasionally defend his combative, abrasive style against what I have often felt has been an unfairly hostile media, I cannot defend this."

Nick Bryant on Twitter: "The two Americas in split screen...."

Fleet Street Fox in the Mirror: "There is no way to prove that journalism has saved and improved more human lives than any other job. So let's just say that we've done our bit, along with medicine, education, sanitation and politics. It's why we're on the key worker list, and why journalists are catching coronavirus too. Journalists are in the trenches as well. That's why you know the trenches exist."

Ian Burrell on Twitter on The News, Portsmouth: "When I was a boy I would run to the letterbox, drag out this paper and read it front and back. It was my little window on my community and the world. Today I'm writing it in it about the death of my dad from this awful virus."

Hamilton Nolan in the Columbia Journalism Review: "In every crisis lies an opportunity for the rich. Investors wealthy enough to hoard cash can scoop up bargains when financial crises strike, and publications rich enough to maintain their staffing levels and quality can scoop up the readers—and the journalists—abandoning weaker publications. Thus the industry consolidates into a smaller number of more powerful platforms, a process that will continue until the government intervenes to change the existing economic model that supports journalism."

Roy Greenslade in the Guardian: "Although formal announcements by publishers stress that their dramatic Covid-19 measures will be temporary, there is reason to believe some may be permanent. Newsprint, the transmission of news by ink on paper, might not recover from the contagion in what could eventually be seen as a transformational moment for the 380-year British newspaper history."

David Higgerson on Twitter: "Over the past few weeks the Guardian’s reporting of local news industry has veered between patronising and unbalanced. For months, Anything positive has been ignored, anything negative seized upon. No idea why. You can almost hear the sound of @GreensladeR salivating at his decades of ‘you’re all doomed’ prophecies coming true. Hopefully he’ll be wrong again."

Roy Greenslade on Twitter: "Some people who commented yesterday on my @mediaguardian  column suggested that I want newspapers to die, that I'm glorying in their demise. Not so. As I've been doing for the past 20 years, I'm merely acting as a journalist should by telling it how it is."

Jim Waterson in the Guardian: "The parent company of the Guardian and the Observer has announced plans to furlough about 100 non-editorial staff in an effort to reduce costs amid industry-wide falls in revenue because of the coronavirus pandemic. Although Covid-19 coverage has driven record numbers of readers to the Guardian’s website, the economic slowdown has caused a collapse in the advertising market."

Mark Di Stefano and Patricia Nilsson in the Financial Times [£]: "National newspapers sales fell over a fifth between the middle and end off March, according to data from distributors Smiths News. Sales at major supermarkets fell as much as 48 per cent in the week to March 24, while those at travel hubs and motorway stores fell as much as 67 per cent and 70 per cent respectively."

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