I’m always looking for new ways to hone my trade in communications, be it classical or technological. I sometimes take my queue from the true masters, aka the British broadsheets.

I have decided to forever close the door on my respect for one of these bastions of journalism and clever communications. Here’s why:

I was taken by an advert in the G2 section of yesterday’s Guardian. It talked about an SEO class in their Media Academy.

So I punched the URL into my HTC Magic phone and got this:

What the hell's army guy doing there anyway?

Don’t want to face you with facts, Guardian people, but three things are already at play here conspiring to destroy your newspaper:

1. It’s been 15 years since you saw a commercial web browser coming. Yet you have been insistent in your denial of web hacking down the monopoly of traditional media.
2. The New York Times recently reported a circulation dip below 1 million – that’s a first since it, um, went above 1 million, which happened around the birth of Christ. So now newspapers have got the apocalyptic masterstroke of lost revenue and lost circulation to contend with.
3. Hyperlocalisation will probably kill you first. Everyone’s a journalist. Fort Hood aside, citizen reporting is ace. It’s targeted, can be effectively advertising-driven (since revenue-hungry suppliers know how relevant/long tail their merchandising can be/will be) and is happening, right now, in the US. And it won’t be done badly in the UK forever. It’s coming. metblogs.com and cityzombie.com are replicable over this side of the pond in fine style.

And since I am a writer not a counter…

4. Your ignorance of mobile device powerplay is deceitful to your objectives. You want to teach me how to do things on the web? Let me use it first.

In this day and age, it is simply an unacceptable practice to feature content that is inaccessible on the move. Perhaps the citizens of the Grauniad need to go back to school – any courses coming up at the Media Academy on website usability? Jakob Nielsen may be able to give you some pointers…