Amidst all the talk and digital-native-beard-tugging about the demise of print media, one deeply disturbing facet seems to have barely raised a whisper – what about the norks?

Love it or loathe it (and personally, I am not a fan, although I appreciate it’s a national ins-tit-ution), Fleet Street’s passion for putting near-naked women, and the occasional near-naked gent, all over the pages of its print editions sells papers. And at a time when publishers are selling far fewer papers, can they afford to ignore the transition of titillation to the internet, given its pulling power – so to speak – on paper pages?

Page 3, the daddy of them all, is one of The Sun’s most cherished assets (and that term is something that frequently appears in its copy on the topic). Yet in the master plan for sustainable online journalism, it is being ignored.

While many of the red-tops have tried to replicate the reader appeal of topless women on their web sites, it simply isn’t the same. It’s not that size matters, it’s just that a single evocative image confronting a reader in the morning has far more impact that a bunch of near-naked women smiling from far smaller online pictures. The page 3 web site, for example, seems like a platform for selling branded merchandise rather than, if you’ll pardon the crudeness, a cheap excuse to gaze briefly at a pair of tits.

In fact the Page 3 web site looks decidedly uncomfortable, like it really wants to be like the print version but can’t because there can’t be any naughty bits exposed. It seems more like a guilty-looking brochure for some very bad soft porn.

The media has a real dilemma here. If it exposes as much flesh online as it does in print, it won’t get very far because it risks being morally classified as porn. Yet if it doesn’t find a way to flash its wares on the internet to a similar effect as the print format, it risks losing one of the key factors that compel many readers to buy – and keep buying.

Unless it’s addressed, our nation faces losing some of its most cherished journalistic breast-oriented euphemistic phrases to the mists of time, such as:
- Her firm favourites
- At the double
- Paired down
- Down mammory lane
- Makes a pertinent point
- The Essex beauty

Beyond that, what about all of the cutting insight on politics, world hunger and corporate ethics that’s served up to readers by such ‘beauties’ each day?

Media commentators and influencers, you should make a stand and spotlight an issue that, if not resolved, could see part of our British heritage gone forever. The gawp factor that has long been the envy of foreign journalists could well be going tits up.