As to doing it better, I’ve been banging on about, especially, opinion passed off as fact and misleading headlines for years but no-one at the Guardian, like the Reader’s Editor, seems to want to talk about it.

Take the front page today. Totally misleading. The prosector will not ‘decide Huhne’s career’.

I’m not saying that all of those issues are not genuine issues, but if we presented those questions to a reader who may not have even thought about them before, the likelihood is their answers would be “no”. After all, who is going to offer up a “yes” to those?

Better that we test the issue by taking a specific article and trying to get qualitative feedback on, for example, the headline and the factual tone of the piece from a representative range of our readers.

This isn’t done enough, I don’t think. We user-test platforms, but rarely our content.

I’d love to learn how to do it better. In my experience it is quite difficult to get people to talk about the editorial construction of a piece, as it is often easily conflated with the news topic discussed in the story.

do you want filler in the paper?

do you want the Guardian to copy (I’m thinking of the irritating ’5 Things…’ construct) other newspapers?

do you want headline writers to use cliches?

do you want journalists to offer their opinions in news pieces?

All these things happen.

I do, however, believe those who edit the Guardian newspaper are experienced in balancing different types of stories that our readers want to see in print. I know providing context for a current story is useful to many (in the specific case of honours, I had two different conversations yesterday with non-newsy friends about what you would have to do to get stripped of an honour).

I guess I approach the two quotes from the perspective of someone who nowadays works in digital and is tantalised by the idea that we have the chance to find out more than ever before about what readers might want through a combination of:

- analytics
- user testing
- asking them

There are still ongoing questions about how effectively we use all of these and also, as online news brands go global, exactly who and where are our readers and learning what their varying interests and needs are.

However, I think if you go in to anything thinking “how is this looking after the needs and interests of our readers?” The outcomes are likely to be different than if it’s “how can I create something that wins me an award”?

I might be wrong of course, but it amuses me that an interest in collaboration in journalism has led me to reach similar conclusions to Rupert Murdoch.

My response – who cares? I want news, not history – and I certainly don’t want filler which is what copy of this type (and it is extremely common), feels like. Do other readers want it? I don’t know the answer – do you?