Utterly predictable: TWO-year-old news website The Global Mail is to shut down after reports its backer, entrepreneur Graeme Wood, withdrew funding from the venture this week. Wood committed up to $20 million over five years to the project, which launched under founding editor Monica Attard in February 2012... The dream vs the audience: It promised quality journalism, free of ads and celebrity. The site began in February 2012 with 97,000 unique visitors but this audience halved in the second month of operation to 47,000, according to Nielsen figures. True, the Global Mail was simply boring. Too much tired writing by ideological hacks. But even so, it's worth observing that the audience for things Left is very rarely as big as these self-appointed tribunes of the people imagine, which is why so many journalists of the Left support state-backed media. Second, the Global Mail would have done a bit better had it not had competition from the state-funded ABC, providing the same ideological diet to the same readers. For free.