mediaXchange's country diversions, more of the anti-Fairfax vitriol and we find a missing Cossar, as Peter Coleman wraps it up

This wonderful job I have at GXpress brings enormous compensations which help make up for the lack of financial reward. World travel among them.

And frustrations: This weekend I'm laying pages out when I'd rather be in Nashville for the opening of NAA's mediaXchange event. On Monday I have to front up for some minor (I hope) eye surgery, instead of being at the conference proper, and I see the need to get ahead while I can, so to speak!

From the days when it almost completely ignored print publishing, mediaXchange - a replacement for the old Nexpo event - has come to the realisation that there are still dollars to be made in print, while driving the transition into digital.

But hey, that's not the only reason why this year's would be a good conference to have attended: Recognising its location in what likes to call itself 'Music City', things kick off with a reception at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and organisers have interleaved the business programme with performances with some of my favourite country artists, including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Justin Adams, Mickey Guyton and Caroline Kole.

Nice idea... and yes I know, tough bikkies; I'll get back to the page layout now.

Not having had the stomach for it earlier in the year, I took Ben Hills' book 'Stop the presses' out of the library over the holiday. And immersed myself in the sad story of the fading glory of Australia's newspaper industry. Not the one Hills tells - another yarn obsessed with what he sees as the errors of Fairfax Media's management - but the reality of a market divided and diminished by competition for advertising and eyeballs.

There's another story Hills doesn't mention too, after half an hour or so on the phone with GX; perhaps what we said - that production primarily out of North Richmond and Ballarat was as now proven, perfectly feasible - was not what he wanted to hear.

That The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald exist at all should be cause for celebration given the raging desire in the Murdoch camp to see them dead. Hard to compete, too, with a publication with the backing that the Australian has: As I write, Thursday's paper sports a couple of half-page advertisements and some public notices, if you discount the many house ads. Yet there's always space - and prominence - for the outpouring of vitriol against Fairfax, the ABC... and it seems, anyone else who stands in News' way.

There's been a glut of books about Fairfax lately, but no surprise to hear that Pamela Williams has left Fairfax after writing hers; she obviously wasn't happy. What's more amazing, perhaps, is that they gave her a redundancy payout. Here's a thought: Wouldn't it be great if the country's greatest publishers - and its disaffected would-be authors - could quit bickering and promote news media's bigger picture?

Are you tired of hearing about old printing machines? After our story last year tracking the last Cossars, Tom McGowran has sent me a couple of pictures of a press resting precariously in the quaint UK village of Williton.

In an understatement that must claim records for its modesty, he says it "just needs a bit of spit 'n polish and an oily rag to be as good as new..." Anyway, it's visual proof of the existence of one of only a handful of the celebrated web-fed letterpress machines surviving... and as you can see, it's in need of some love. McGowran says it is apparently compete with all the electrics still in place: "It's a bit rusty but nothing serious."

And yes, it's looking for a home - please - available free-of-charge to anyone who would like to make any use of it. "No warranty, Tom? What do you mean, no warranty."