John Rentoul, columnist for the Independent on Sunday, tweeted: "Good on @amolrajan, editor of The @Independent, for writing against his readership".
Of course, these losses in print must be set against increasing readership online and it would paint a much better picture of the true state of affairs at each title if the digital tally was published alongside the print sales.
What they probably didn't realise is that Evans' hire is part of a largely overlooked decision by Rupert Murdoch's News UK business to invest heavily in the booming British commercial radio industry, hedging against the ageing readership of its print outlets such as the Sun.
I do not pose the question out of malice, let alone to annoy hair-shirted Robespierres among the readership, but because the reaction against the petty greed displayed by some MPs over their expenses has unleashed "reforms" that will make it unattractive for many people to enter politics.
So how does Sun Media unwind after all of this trolling against its own readership, specific ethnic groups, and Canada at large?
"We're encouraged that the latest NRS figures show that the Guardian is the only national newspaper to have grown its paper readership over the past year – up 3 per cent against declines in the quality market of between 8 and 15 per cent.
For instance, in Asia, we were added to the Asian Businessman Readership Survey of publications and measured against titles that have spent far more time in the field.
The chief thing is to run an item or two against the grain of the readership.
Most consumer and business publishers have unsurprisingly lost profits and revenue in past two years, against a backdrop of falling readership: the ABC figures for the first half of 2009 show that readership declined 21.5% – a loss of 17.4m copies – compared with the equivalent period a year earlier.
Recently this was clearly the case whereby the New York Times elected to regale its readership by twice publishing a screed fulminating against the construct of the contemporary art world.
