There’ll be a plethora of blog posts today and for the next few days about what’s happened at the News of the World this week. Already, rival hacks are lamenting the loss of some “great journalists” at the Sunday red top.

Perhaps some of those journalists can now reflect on the ruined lives of people they’ve pilloried in the pages of their rag.

While I have some sympathy with those people losing their jobs essentially for the sins of their forefathers–and I have a personal interest in that I’m entering the journalism jobs market so this makes competition even tougher–they’re getting 90 days pay.

That’s 3 months to find a new job. I’m sure that for those who aren’t snapped up by the much-speculated Sunday Sun, they’ll find employment elsewhere very soon. Perhaps with BSkyB, assuming News of the World has been Rupert Murdoch’s sacrificial lamb to protect that deal.

However, I’m not sure where this alleged “great journalism” is. I’ll concede that amongst the bile, boobs and bullshit there’s the rare great scoop, a recent example being the Pakistan cricket match fixing scandal.

On the most part, though, the News of the World was a tits ‘n’ arse comic strip of voyeurism into the sexual exploits of celebrities.

Is this the fault of the News of the World and its journalists, though?

Society deserves the media it consumes. There is a big demand for trivial, celebrity journalism. For some reason, far beyond my understanding, people want to know if Cheryl and Ashley Cole are in a relationship or not.

News of the World was successfully and profitably meeting that demand.

The death of this newspaper does not mean the death of this type of journalism. There are tons of magazines, newspapers and websites that are also scraping the journalism barrel to meet this market demand. They will continue to exist and new competitors will emerge.

What’s happened is like cutting off one wart on a particularly warty hand. Unless you deal with the infection as a whole, warts will continue to grow.

For us to deal with the root cause of gutter journalism, our media-greedy consumer society needs to take a long look at itself in the mirror and acknowledge some uncomfortable truths.

I doubt we will.