Spectator competition: laments for lost newspapers (plus: historical characters’ desert island discs)

In his 2004 book The Vanishing Newspaper Philip Meyer predicted that the final hard-copy newspaper will plop through someone’s letterbox in 2043. So who’ll be the first to go? In the latest competition you were invited to imagine that one of the major newspapers has ceased publication and provide a verse lament for it. A couple of you submitted entertaining entries in the style of William McGonagall, poet and tragedian — take a bow, David Silverman and Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead — and my head was also turned by Brian Murdoch, who didn’t seem overly sad about the demise of the Guardian. Over to D.A. Prince, who pockets £30 and her fellow prize-winners, who earn £25 each.

D.A. Prince No more the morning doorstep thumps that        bring news and opinions from the public sphere. The Guardian’s laid to rest where angels sing and deadlines are no more, is grieved for where the muesli-ed tables sit, forlorn and sad.