I recognise racing's struggle for column inches in mainstream media - but I'm not sure it matters that much anymore

It was a pleasure to see Marcus Townend's smiley features in Wednesday's paper, having enjoyed sharing press rooms with him for much of the past 20 years, but his message was far from cheerful. In fact, he imparted so many scary thoughts about racing's position in the world that I wanted Nick Ross to pop up at the end and tell me not to have nightmares.

It brought some unhappy memories back to the surface and reminded me how lucky I've been to be part of the Racing Post for the past three years, a place where your only job is to find something interesting to say about the sport we love. If you can do that, it'll get published and put before a large readership who will want to pore over it.

In my last few years on a national daily, finding a news story was only half the challenge. You then had to persuade someone on the sports desk that your story was worth space in the paper, and the response became increasingly sceptical as time went on.