A rather narrow demographic

Read The Age these days and the thing you notice first — other than the lousy subbing, ham-fisted cropping, leaden headlines, warmist stenography and lightly re-written press releases from activist groups — is the near-total absence of top-shelf display advertisers. This is curious, as The Age likes to present itself as the paper favoured by the well-heeled ‘A-B demographic’. Surely, if you are a Toorak Road vendor of $1000 handbags, those alleged readers are precisely the sorts whose patronage you would wish to attract.

In theory, yes. But read the paper’s Letters columns and the suspicion arises that potential advertisers may not see much commercial potential in the pitiful 113,000 people who still buy the The Age on a typical weekday. From this morning’s Fairfax exercise in the abuse of ink and forest products, a further indication of why merchants may see little potential in attracting Age readers to their stores (unless they are selling those F*** Abbott T-shirts the paper so helpfully promoted):

”Abbott raises terror alert level to high” (13/9). Yes, he certainly does.
Jim Picot, Altona

Personally, I have been on alert since Mr Abbott was voted in.
Greg Oates, Huon Creek

Mr Abbott needs to remember the boy who cried ”wolf”. John Howard got a bit of mileage out of the fear card. Not sure it will work so well a second time.
Marg Ludowyk, Brunswick

Mother Nature faces a greater threat from the Abbott government than from any perceived terrorist.
Phil Alexander, Eltham

Come on, Ms Rinehart, stop messing about and buy Fairfax outright. You would be doing Melbourne a huge favour.