Aye Write! Perhaps we secretly love to believe the internet is all-powerful and former BBC man Michael Buerk rang the death knell of printed journalism - once again at the hands of the web.

Mitchell Library, Glasgow
Lesley McDowell
About eight years ago at another book festival, Andreas Whittam Smith confidently predicted the demise of the printed book at the hands of the internet. What he couldn't have foreseen was the rise of a phenomenon called the book group.

Here, though, former BBC man Michael Buerk rang the death knell of printed journalism - once again at the hands of the internet.

I think we secretly love to believe the internet is all-powerful. Certainly, the facts and figures Buerk reeled off in his speech - a marvellous example of controlled anger - were sobering (only 25% of under-45s watch television news, for example). And Google is the second most trusted purveyor of news after the BBC, despite the fact it isn't actually a news organisation and therefore doesn't employ any journalists or fact-checkers.

What really bothers Buerk, though, is the link between the internet and "dumbing-down". In order to recapture those advertisers, viewers and readers that the internet has stolen, he believes, quality journalism has become "more trivial, more celebrity-obsessed more concerned with opinion, not analysis".

I'm not suggesting that in 10 years there will be little groups huddled over their newspapers, desperate for a chance to stretch their brains. But I wonder if it's possible that "the people" - the very democratising influence Buerk feels has led to the dumbing down of so much of our media - might just be after something better; and might change the way he feels things are going.

Because hope was certainly offered in the session that preceded Buerk's: Lynne Truss, sold out to an audience who clearly care deeply about misplaced commas and ill-used semicolons. The hidden masses of grammatical pedants showed themselves in force when Truss's book Eats, Shoots and Leaves came out, making it a huge success. Tonight she entertained us with a "desperate housewife's monologue", and even if it wasn't quite as prescriptive as her best-selling title, it still managed to educate and tell us a thing or two.