So Farewell, then, Telegraph Blogs…

So Telegraph blogs is finally to close. To no one’s great surprise, I would imagine.

Some of us, certainly, will have seen the writing on the wall in recent Telegraph blogposts like these:

Tom Chivers: Why Global Warming Is More Real Than Ever Before And People Who Think Otherwise Are Just Plain Silly.

Dan Hodges: Behind Nigel Farage’s Jovial Smile Lies A Baby-Killing Puppy-Eater Who Would Bring Back Slavery, Chain Every Woman To The Stove And Murder Every Single One Of The World’s Remaining Tigers.

An Oxbridge Girl: How Everyday Sexism – Like Blue Coloured Romper Suits For Baby Boys, For Example – Is Turning Every Woman’s Life Into A Living Hell Even Worse Than The Holocaust And The Rape Of Nanking Put Together

Possibly I exaggerate. But only a bit. And yes I know one is supposed to be all de mortuis nil nisi bonum on these occasions but really.

What the hell did the Telegraph think it was doing, turning what was for a period the home of the sharpest, wittiest, most fearless right-wing online journalism into yet another feeble imitation of Salon, the Huffington Post, Slate and Komment Macht Frei?

Seriously. I’m genuinely mystified by this. Surely the thing about workable business models is that you look for a gap in the market. So if you notice, say, that the online journalism market is saturated with identikit, greenie-liberal-lefty-progressive-social-justice-warrior drivel then surely the canny thing to do is what Telegraph blogs used to do and which Breitbart is doing now: appeal to a readership which doesn’t necessarily believe that all men are rapists and that Islam is the Religion of Peace and that the only problem with government is that there isn’t enough of it and that all the polar bears are drowning and it’s all our fault.

Then again, I’m just a snail-darter-murdering, climate-denying, typical right-wing-sexist-pig hack. So what would I know?