At the close of business on the Nasdaq stock exchange, News Corporation shares closed at $US 24.495, its highest for five years.

Rewind a couple of years and there were three female CEOs at the top of three major UK national newspaper groups – Carolyn McCall, Rebekah Brooks and Sly Bailey. Two rose to the top through the commercial side of the business and one through the editorial side.

The Leveson inquiry, Hackgate and/or Horsegate are becoming more and more humorous by the day. Just when you thought it was quietening down along comes another “moment” that makes those of us who are not involved titter… Are the Met Police just getting nasty or do they have a real dark sense of humour?

The second Sunday edition of The Sun sold in the region of 2.7 million copies. This is down just over 17% on the launch issue last week.

The latest ABC release for the regional press continues to show online usage increasing for the regional networks. The top network is still Trinity Mirror with over nine million monthly unique browsers.

Trinity Mirror suffered the most at the hands of the new Sunday edition of The Sun. Following Rupert Murdoch’s tweet telling 190,000 followers that the first edition of The Sun on a Sunday sold 3,260,000 copies.

So 2011 was the year of newspapers… and with the Leveson inquiry and police investigations continuing, it is hard to see “Hackgate” being off the news agenda.

Ping! 9.50am Last Friday an email hits my inbox from the National Readership Survey (NRS).

To say it was eagerly awaited may be a slight exaggeration but nonetheless I had a deadline and my editor’s strict on time.

So what effect has The Guardian’s 20% cover price rise had on its sale? Well, its hard to tell from the audited data in the public domain. September’s ABC tells a pretty gloomy story.

Apologies to regular readers of this column for not writing about the August ABC’s or letting you know that I was having a short break. I suppose we could have got a guest substitute like they do for Clarkson when he is in Barbados…