Clark Kent's got a new job. But where next for Morse, Jeeves and Mr Chips?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/28/ceefax-superman-leaves-daily-planet

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Those of us who worry about the old media have had a fraught week – and we're used to stress. The last few days have been up there with those anxious months in the 1480s when the bottom fell out of illuminated manuscripts. They've seen the demise of Ceefax – probably the most recent of all the old media, a brand spanking new old medium, hardly conceived before it was careering towards obsolescence. Useful, if clunky – like a seatbelt but it didn't save lives – this valiant example of British innovation will be sadly missed and reminds us that not everything that came out of the BBC in the 1970s is tinged with rape.

Worse than that, the most powerful journalist in the world has quit. It emerged last week that Clark Kent, aka Superman, is to leave his reporting job in the forthcoming issue of the comic. Initially I assumed he was protesting against all the nasty commenters on the Daily Planet website: the thousands calling him an arsehole without having paid for the paper, or complaining that he only got to save the world because of his posh upbringing on Krypton. But apparently not: as well as his other powers, Superman is super-thick-skinned and embraces the internet age. He's off to work in new media and, according to Scott Lobdell, the writer of the series, is "likely to start the next Huffington Post".

Presumably Kent originally chose to work in the print media in order to be at the beating heart of news, so he'd find out about impending world crises and sport before his fellow citizens and would consequently be best placed to save their lives. But, as the under-resourced Daily Planet came increasingly to rely on stories cobbled together from Twitter, the giving out of free DVDs and endless pages of comment, Kent's disillusionment must have grown. The last straw was a disagreement with proprietor Morgan Edge over his preference for celebrity gossip over hard news. Apparently they'd also just given some comedian a column.

Superman will be all right, of course. If his internet start-up founders, he could reboot his career on Dancing with the Stars. But, in an era of crumbling institutions, where will the fictional heroes they once sheltered end up? What hovels will they fashion for themselves in the entrepreneurial rubble?

Jimmy Olsen becomes a pap

The Daily Planet's keen young photojournalist has long since noticed which way the technological wind is blowing and gone freelance. With his digital camera and close working relationship with Superman, he can sell pictures of world disasters to the highest bidder. "No sooner has Superman heard that there's a bus about to fall off a suspension bridge than we're there: Superman rescues the bus while I see if I can get up-the-skirt shots of the flustered passengers. People really lose their sense of modesty when they think they're about to die. I can have the shots online before Mr S has repaired the bridge with his laser eyes."

Dr Watson sets up a reflexology clinic

Disillusioned with the NHS, Watson has been searching out a better way to spend his time during Holmes's frequent cocaine binges. "Medicine is a mug's game," is his diagnosis. "People resent what you earn and sue if you accidentally kill them. Worse than that, you're constantly having to meet diseased people and deal with the insoluble problem of their mortality. Far better to earn my crust sympathising with affluent malingerers. After all, alternative medicine does a hell of a lot of good for those who don't happen to be ill. Also, in my Harley Street clinic, I get to meet the kind of rich person who's likely to be involved in an interesting murder."

Mr Chips says goodbye early

In the latest reimagining of the tale of Mr Chipping, the noble and dogged public schoolmaster who inspired generations of schoolboys with his principles and erudition, Chips leaves Brookfield in disgust when the prime minister, an old Brookfieldian, slashes spending on libraries and the arts. "You can't spend your life worrying about whether or not children know Latin," he concludes. "You've got to follow your dream!" In this case, a gay dance reimagining of the Satyricon which he's staging above a pub in Wandsworth.

Rumpole of the Bailey makes sideways move into corporate law

With legal aid now capped at the bus fare for a trainee solicitor to come and explain how to plead guilty, Rumpole desperately needed a more remunerative outlet for his legal knowledge. Inspired by an old university friend who makes an excellent living concocting legal challenges to anything nasty that gets printed about Jeffrey Archer, Horace decided he'd had enough of criminal law and is now doing a roaring trade defending chemical conglomerates against class actions from the various poor people they've maimed.

Inspector Morse takes the plunge into app design

In ITV's latest remake, following the success of Lewis, Endeavour, Morse at School, Morsel (the Inspector's Infant Cases), Space Morse and What If Morse Was In The Sweeney But He Wasn't Regan He Was Still Morse?, comes Morse Code, a brand new quality drama in which Morse didn't die but just went into hiding and had plastic surgery to look like Robson Green. Increasingly disillusioned with the police force post-Hillsborough, Morse does an IT course, moves to the Isle of Skye and tries to make a living designing cryptic-crossword- and real-ale-based smartphone apps.

Mary Poppins works in PR

Preferring to leave the tedium of caring for other people's children to those who are trying to obtain residency rights, the former magical nanny is forging a very successful career since founding Practically Perfect PR. "There are two types of PR company," she explains. "Those who tell people about events, movies, shows and products that are already very popular and don't really need PR, and those who fail to tell them about those that aren't and do. The trick is to be in the former camp."

Jeeves is now an accountancy whiz

The news that Bertie Wooster has enrolled at film school so horrifies Jeeves that he puts his days in service behind him. Far from a revolutionary though, he finds another way of shoring up the status quo by optimising the tax arrangements of his former employer and other members of the Drones. So brilliant is the ex-valet's interpretation of tax law that the British taxpayer accidentally ends up owing Bertie the entire GDP of China.

David Mitchell's autobiography, Back Story, is out now