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One such occasion has happened to me just recently - or indeed several such occasions. I'd been to a meeting or two with Microsoft's PRs, informally. We spoke, among other things, about Microsoft's new "Office Live" offering. I couldn't get to the formal launch but that was OK, I knew about the product. I thought.

I assumed - quite wrongly, it turns out - that this was the long-threatened, by analysts if not by Microsoft itself, version of Office onto which you could log from anywhere - a fully-hosted application suite. Sounded a good idea to me. I made noises like "people have tried this in the days before broadband and of course it didn't work", and of course Microsoft - which was preparing Office Live, which is actually a web-writing and hosting and e-mailing product - agreed. I said, people will have to trust the host implicitly and reliability will be everything. Microsoft agreed again.

Looking back on it, I couldn't have done a better job of not quite asking the question or making the comment that would have alerted them to the fact that I had completely the wrong concept in my mind if I'd tried really, really hard. So it didn't occur to me that when I mentioned the launch in the AOB section of the Guardian's Business Sense supplement I was actually outlining an entirely different product to that which Microsoft had actually launched.

I have to say Inferno PR, Microsoft's voice on Earth for this product set, has been very professional and constructive about the whole affair. It'll be sorted out relatively painlessly. Mistakes and misunderstandings happen.

But if anyone ever sees me looking complacent about what I do, feel free to whisper 'Office Live' into my ear. I might not look pleased but a swift reminder won't do me any harm.

For my money, after discussion with a number of fellow hacks, I'd agree that the nature of journalists has changed since the PG's heyday. In the 1980s desktop publishing started and with that came a whole bunch of DTP'd magazines. Many were about computers. This is important because these magazines brought with them a new form of journalist, one who popped up ready-formed rather than going through the traditional local press followed by national press route. This has spread way beyond the IT press by now.

This meant that a lot of journalists - many of whom are now pretty senior - have grown up respecting but taking no real interest in the regional press. This in turn made a lot of the content of the PG redundant for a lot of its readership.

I don't know what you do when your readers start to fragment, and by dividing its pages up accordingly PG did its best. Other issues contributed, though. As a former contributor I'll admit to finding it galling that the MD who took it increasingly into loss and then buried it was on £133,000 per annum while contributors were getting £190 per 1000 words. The commissioning editors often seemed embarrassed at the word rate and I don't blame them.

I'd like to think there'll be another trade mag for the press emerging at some stage, but the silo mentality - in which the magazine journalists are only interested in passing in the newspaper journalists and in which trade journalists don't readily identify themselves with their colleagues on the regionals- will remain an obstacle for anyone attempting to set it up.

And that's from an editorial point of view only. How you'd make a case for advertising in a mag that attempted to straddle all of those groups I just don't know.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/241106/press_gazette_closes_40_years_magazines_journalism

Dismal news. The UK press is now without its own trade rag.

If any of the staff are reading, I wish you luck in everything you go on to do.

I had a bad feeling about this when they started canvassing for new owners on their front page a little while back. I can only hope that someone's in there - no doubt waiting for the price to go down - and will keep the thing running.

Mind you, if someone does step in and buy it at bargain basement prices you can't help but imagine the rate they pay freelances, which is already unspectacular, will sink even further.

There is an excellent article on the subject here at journalism.co.uk. It's worth reading, and to the hints in there I'd add:

1. Try to understand what the editor has to do for a living. Make it simpler and you'll succeed.
2. Remember they can always buy articles from elsewhere.
3. Specialise in something - my own freelancing has only taken off since people have thought 'small business, we'll ask Guy'
4. Never take a rejection personally. The editor doesn't know you, they know your idea.