The News of the World is gone – for now. The name is tainted and the brand is toxic, but the reappearance of a News International Sunday publication shouldn’t be ruled out, if not a Sun on Sunday then something similar. As Roy Greenslade recently revealed, plans were afoot to co-ordinate production between the weekly and daily operations, the kind of merger that is happening all over the shrinking newspaper industry as revenues fall and profits are maximised.
We don’t know the whole extent of the phonehacking, or the payments to police, allegations of which have presaged the demise of the 168-year-old newspaper. A person’s number in someone’s diary is not the same as their voicemail having definitely been hacked, for example. We don’t know what the outcome will be of various investigations, inquiries and hearings, including the one overseen by Brooks herself at News International. But people couldn’t wait for all that to unfold: they demanded something be done now. If they jumped the gun and jumped to conclusions based on limited evidence, they were only acting the way they had been taught to by the News of the World itself.
“We will be passing our dossier to the police.” Those words appeared at the end of News of the World investigations down the years, implying that readers should infer guilt on the part of whichever ne’er-do-well was being investigated that week, their wrongdoings exposed thanks to secret recording or other “dark arts”. It created a culture in which an allegation became proof, a culture in which readers were invited to leap to conclusions. If people have done so this week, the News of the World can hardly condemn such behaviour.
This time there is no dossier to be handed to police; there is just a closure of the country’s biggest-selling newspaper. In the end, the pressure on advertisers was too much to bear. This wasn’t a faux-outrage confined to a few angry liberals on Twitter or Facebook; this was something that genuinely dismayed ordinary people, including the kind of people who might ordinarily buy the News of the World on the weekend, and the kind of corporations who would not want to see their brands associated with such unpleasant allegations as have surfaced over recent months.
So, will it be enough to satisfy those who have been outraged by the revelations of this week? Rebekah Brooks is safely in her position, and Rupert Murdoch’s bid for BSkyB remains under consideration, possibly in an even stronger place than before thanks to the corporation having one fewer publication in its portfolio. Will the axeing of one newspaper make everything all right? Was it really just one newspaper doing this, just a couple of people who were up to no good while the senior figures were on holiday on every single occasion?
As far as the future goes, there is now a gap in the market, and somewhere for two million readers to get their sport, celebrity gossip and occasionally news from now that the much-loved ‘News of the Screws’ (and many people did love it) has been consigned to history. It would be amazing if News International did not put out a publication to fill that void, but how long that will take to happen remains to be seen. Now is the time for readers to embrace quality journalism, if they want it. But will they, and do they? The ‘Screws’ had the right formula to attract a huge amount of Sunday readers: celebrity kiss and tells, football transfer rumours and the like. It’s naive to imagine they’ll all start buying the Sunday Telegraph or the Observer, but it’s time for the others to step up to the plate. Will the other Sunday papers reach higher, or aim lower?
I have nothing but sympathy for those hardworking journalists who have been consigned to the scrapheap through no fault of their own, almost all of whom are entirely innocent of any of the breaches of ethics alleged to have taken place at the Screws down the years. It’s not their fault, and it’s a horrible place out there to try and find work at the moment. Perhaps some will find a place at a new News International Sunday publication; but many won’t. They will join an ever growing list of redundant journalists on the scrapheap who are fighting for an ever-diminishing pool of jobs.
So perhaps it’s not time to rejoice over the demise of this newspaper, but to remember the human cost of the activities which saw the publication so reviled in the public imagination – not just the journalists who have been left without a job, since the vast majority are deserving of sympathy rather than condemnation; but also those victims of the trashy tabloid tactics that saw a once-thriving newspaper turned into public enemy number one. That it should have had its demise hastened by quality investigative journalism is probably fitting.
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