At the end of March, I wrote my final column under the Pendennis byline in The Observer and was not replaced. An extraordinary list of names, from Anthony Sampson to Barbara Cartland, had worn the Pendennis hat before me. At more or less the same time, The Independent’s Pandora writer, Henry Deedes, faced compulsory redundancy; the Daily Mail’s deputy diary editor, John McEntee, departed; Celia Walden was moved from The Daily Telegraph’s Spy column and The Sunday Telegraph’s hardworking Mandrake team asked to fill the space by putting some of their scoops into the daily pages…

So what has happened to diary journalism? And does the demise of the diary mean the end of professional gossip? Until recently the diary was an essential and muscular part of every newspaper, heralded by writers from Evelyn Waugh to Nicholas Coleridge, who in his new novel, Deadly Sins (published by Orion in April), describes how influential characters use gossip columns to circulate stories about one another in entirely untraceable ways.

In part, the disappearance or shrinking of gossip columns is simply a result of the change in economic circumstances across newspapers. Diaries aren’t cheap: as well as the salary of an editor and deputy editor, the best diaries used to employ reporters, pay generously for freelance tips, and demand comfortable expense accounts for lunches and taxis home for sometimes drunk and disorderly hacks. That’s a pretty steep rate for a few hundred words a day, and as the industry battles to save newspapers the diary column is an obvious place to cut costs.

But that is not the whole story, because the decline in newspaper revenue needs to be seen against a backdrop of a changing social landscape. What was good for chronicling the boom years does not seem so right when it comes to charting the bust. What interested readers when times were good runs the risk now of seeming irrelevant. There are exceptions, and it is worth noting them because each shows how diary journalism can still thrive. The Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary is a must-read because, despite the influence of its readership, it’s a local paper and people like to know what is happening in their own backyard. The Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle column, regarded by many as the alternative leader column of that paper, is a piece of comic genius. The Telegraph’s Mandrake breaks the old-fashioned diary stories now, largely free for the picking, at social parties.

Generally speaking, however, corks are being kept firmly on champagne bottles across the land and so there is less for diaries to cover. I spend some of the week now as the deputy editor of The Observer’s books section, and the publishing industry speaks openly of cutting back launch parties. Books are not alone. Once any shop-opening, with a new range of swimwear or even the design of a single bracelet, would lend an opportunity for getting a couple of celebrity-brand ambassadors into a room with diary reporters and expensive cocktails. Now PRs are lucky if they can send out a paper press release, rather than resorting to an immediatelydeleted email. They have to work harder and, as one said to me last week, “be more inventive about winning national newspaper space”. This is partly because there’s no money for a brash bash, partly because even financially healthy companies are going to run a mile from paying for something that is seen as a frivolous luxury, and partly because the same goes for newspaper readers: outside Tatler, party reports leave a sour taste over the marmalade if the marmalade has to come from the supermarket value range.

That is not to say, however, that the readers’ appetite for gossip has vanished overnight. So stories that were introduced by lines like “…he told me, over a glass of Veuve Cliquot” (spot the plug?) have to find homes elsewhere. The good ones are the easiest to rehouse. Decent diary tales could always have claimed a place on the news pages and now, more than ever, the lines between gossip and news are blurred. So what you are left with for the gossip column is some wry political reflection, a spot of hypocrisy illuminated, and some funny quotes.

At which point, inevitably, enter the internet. Gossip websites, with no lead times, are beating diarists to breaking stories. Whereas five years ago we shamelessly quoted blogs, because other than a few pointy-headed enthusiasts nobody read them, these days bloggers are the competition. Some diarists – such as the Mail on Sunday’s Nathan Kay – have tried launching their own sites, but these make the day job harder still.

Depressed? Perhaps you should be if you’re keen on your newspaper institutions. I’m certainly a bit sad that after three years writing my own diary I could not bequeath it to new blood. But gossip, like the oldest and slipperiest invertebrate at the bottom of the sea, will live on. It is as robust as ever and just has to find clever ways to present itself differently.

Oliver Marre

Are gossip columns – and gossip itself – losing their appeal? Should papers persevere with them? Add YOUR view.