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As to which stories sell papers, from a quick Wikipedia-ing the combined circulation figures for the Observer, Sunday Times, and Independent on Sunday amount to considerably less than a third of those for the News of the World alone. If you have another explanation for that statistic than “worthy stories don’t really sell papers” then I’m happy to hear it. (Not that every story in any of those first three papers is worthy, but a far higher proportion of them are than those in the News of the World.) It might be possible to come up with an explanation as to why this is the case, (the widespread apathy with party politics for which the media is itself partly to blame might play a role, for example) but that’s about it as far as I can tell.

What alternative do you suggest to the current setup, incidentally? I can see that some sort of community-based citizen journalism might work at a local level, but I’m less sure it would work nationally or internationally. State-funded news organisations like the BBC work OK, but I wouldn’t really be comfortable with the BBC having an overt political leaning in the way that newspapers do. The BBC probably isn’t as objective or impartial as it’s meant to be in theory, but it makes a pretty good try at it.

Meanwhile I am not quite as pessimistic as Owen about the market for centre left journalism and its capacity to support a high quality national newspaper. The OP writes that the ‘Observer is run at a loss, which clearly entails that there isn’t sufficient demand to run it at a profit.’ But surely this is surmising the general from the specific.

When we consider what the market CAN support one needs to consider both the number of buyers and what they are willing to pay. The price at which the observer is sold has leapt ahead of inflation, more than doubling 1995-2009 to £2. Meanwhile it sells at £2. Im not taking into account the retailers cut, but nor am I taking into account the enormos revenue for advertising. But this back-of-the-envolope maths gives it £4m a month with which to operate.

I also feel that lefty contempt for the market can sometimes blur into a politico’s contempt for the demos. I don’t think that readers would be more likely to buy a paper because it offered “something much fluffier and less upsetting than child rape in Liberia.” Of course I recognise the problems of modern consumerism. But we do not necessarily need to rely on a bunch of moneyed trustees to make sure worthy stuff gets produced because consumer tastes aren’t up to scratch.