Bringing the digital to life: How can new media reinvigorate the material public sphere

I read with interest Rob Bagchi's prediction - and let's face it, as a sports journalist he's pretty familiar with predictions - that the closing down of the British Library's newspaper depository in Colindale in 2012 may signal the demise of the UK's statistics-enamoured sports fan community. As he put it at the end of his revealing mini-ethnography of this particular grouping of, it seems predominantly if not entirely entirely, men: