Chaser staff excitedly surf the ‘web’ on one of those newfangled ‘laptop’ thingiesIn its tradition of taking old ideas and passing them off as something new, The Chaser will soon be moving to an exciting new format – known as the internet.

It will be possible for readers to download “electronic” articles from the satirical newspaper onto their home computers, once the transformation is complete.

With expectations that internet stocks are set to soar as the ‘e’conomy takes flight, editors are planning to reap windfall profits by floating The Chaser on the stock exchange. Several have shrewdly agreed to forgo an income in exchange for stock options. “What people are only just beginning to understand is that the internet is here to stay,” one of the paper’s editors said yesterday. “Within five to ten years the very concept of a shop will have disappeared, with consumers buying everything from grocery to pets via the internet. It is in these early, pioneering years of the so-called ‘web’ that the greatest gains can be made,” he enthused.

In line with the changes, the company will also be developing e@chaser, a new section devoted to jokes about the tech boom, and will hire a corporate values advisor to craft a mission statement.

“Not many people have heard of mission statements yet, but there actually a great way of of honing in on a company’s core values and true, unique vision. We’re thinking of something like “The Chaser is a forward-looking media company crafting superior satire for the new millennium”.

The decision to go online is not the first visionary decision made by The Chaser. In 1999, the group pioneered the concept of a satirical newspaper, drawing only lightly upon other publications in existance decades before such as Kookaburra, Oz, Matilda, Digger and Honi Soit.