A very smooth young man telephoned me. He said he worked for the company to which the Daily Telegraph had outsourced the production of a supplement for older people, and he was contacting me because I do media relations for the University of the Third Age.
I said I'd be delighted to help any journalist on the publication with an article about any aspect of the U3A's work, but we were not in the market for buying advertising space.
"Ah" he said. "I don't think we could mention you without an investment."
I am not sure I have ever heard it put so brutally. A decade and two ago, when I wrote for such supplements in the Independent, they used to make a fetish of not telling me who the advertisers were.
This is the newspaper industry strangling itself in the search for short term profits.