Personal anecdote: Growing up, from maybe late teens up past 30 I'd say, I was a fanatical adherent of the Irish Times. It's considered to be "centre-right" in its editorial but was also a quality publication, with great editorial and journalistic standards, and still is by far the best Irish daily newspaper (the standard otherwise is not great).

I would devour it. Gobble down her op-eds. Take my thinking from it, even proudly claiming to shocked friends from time to time that it's "where I get my opinion". I was pro-business, anti-union - a champion of conservative values and believed that society adequately served the honest and hard-working.

I bought it every day. I'd proudly strut about with it tucked under my arm. They could have told me black was white and I'd have lapped it up.

About 10 years ago a few things changed, and I can't say what exactly. The editor turned over from a lady who was a distinguished journalist to "some other old guy" - maybe that was it. Maybe it was the financial crisis brought about a lowering of quality standards or a need to compromise values. Or maybe it was the change in government that brought about a regime that was more harmonious with their editorial ideals. The Irish Times has strong ties both presently, and historically with the current ruling party but all through my youth they were in opposition and perhaps this gave the IT a rebellious note.

Maybe I was just getting older and wiser.

Probably all this coming together; but I started to notice the cracks more and more. Not just partiality, but sloppy, careless reporting. Some stuff just downright and even dangerously wrong at times.

They used to be subscriber-only but had some years hence gone purely ad-driven; when they started to go back to being subscriber only I jumped on it because I hoped that subscriber-driven revenue would improve journalistic standards. I enthusiastically battled in the comments section with the freeloading whingers as I saw them.

I signed up for the online edition and to have the weekend edition delivered (getting the delivery to actually come was a litany of operational issues that I won't get into now).

But nothing improved. They spent a bit more money on the site, and rebranded the print edition. That was it. They started introducing more and more obtrusive advertising, and the coverage just got more and more partisan and pro-establishment until one day, they printed just outright lies about the outcome of a trial I had been following closely.

That was it. I was done. The desperate bastards couldn't even give me a way to unsubscribe online. I actually had to ring them up on a number that I found buried in the terms and conditions. Even then on the phone they wanted to know the whys and wherefores and if I'd be back. They were pleasant and polite as was I with them.

Since then I've watched them spiral down down down. They're at a point now where they're presenting different agendas to different "segments": Online subscriber-only articles tend to be more progressive in their outlook. The free-access stuff is grotesquely click-baity. The print edition caters to the stuffy older more conservative readership.

This is a newspaper that claims to be the "Newspaper of Record". It saddens me that it's still far and away the best daily on Irish newstands though.

Sorry for the rant. It's kind of like when Luis Figo went to Real Madrid. One Barca fan recorded as saying "We hate him so much because we loved him so much".