Media analyst Peter Kreisky, chairman of the Kreisky Media Consultancy, told me: “The price of nurturing these clashing cultures will be high. Any attempt to fully integrate them will dilute their individual energy and focus. They appeal to very different audiences. MailOnline competes in the 24/7 minute-by-minute news as click-bait space with Facebook, BuzzFeed and Google, a tough game, while it’s far from clear how traditional Daily Mail journalism can sustain a digital base of sufficient scale. There is already brand confusion, between the digital and print versions. I can see, though, that taking the company private frees of them of the short-termism of quarterly earnings reporting and gives them the time to re-position the declining newspaper business—that’s important because the Daily Mail association underlies the credibility of the branding, for both print and the digital sites.”