The Ernst & Young report on UK national news­pa­pers is avail­able here if you really want to read it. It is worth a look, BUT (…that’s a big but btw) it has the most irrit­at­ing consultant-style stuff in it.

I know journ­al­ists are often accused of twist­ing quotes, but their liber­ties pale in com­par­ison to con­sult­ants’ abil­ity to man­u­fac­ture metrics.

Take this example on CD/DVD add-ons:

43% — Ernst & Young employ­ees respond­ing to a recent internal sur­vey who would be pre­pared to pay for a cov­er­mount (Base: 100). In most cases the premium would have to be within £1.

Yup, the con­sult­ant writ­ing the report has emailed co-workers to gen­er­ate some graph porn. Sheesh.

They may not be able to con­struct a viable rev­enue model, but they cer­tainly know how to make up numbers.