A mourning nation weeps, and wails, but keeps the sales of evil tabloids healthy

[venta]

So, as of this weekend, Britain's best-selling Sunday newspaper[*] will cease publication.

Cause for celebration? I'm not really sure it is, to be honest.

It's possible that someone, somewhere, who understands more about business than me, genuinely thinks that the NotW is damaged beyond repair. They may even be right. The Hillsborough scandal didn't do for the Sun (though allegedly their circulation is still poor in Liverpool), after all. Although admittedly in the '80s you had to put in real effort to show your displeasure instead of just sitting around on Twitter.

However, to me it sounds more like damage limitation. The Murdoch Empire, which is completely innocent of the whole affair, is seen to be Doing Something, and we can now be certain that all those nasty voicemail-intercepting reporters have been taught a lesson. OK?

Possibly, if the Murdochs had an unblemished reputation and a famous devotion to the truth, I'd even believe they were genuinely shocked by the whole thing. Maybe I'm being unfair, and they are. But the NotW's practices somehow seem so indicative of the Murdoch way of doing things that it's difficult to believe the organisation wasn't taking its tone from the top.

I had thought that, a few years back, there had been accusations of phone-hackery levelled at other papers. If there are, however, my google-fu isn't equal to locating them. But I find it difficult to believe - if it was so rife at the News of the World - that other papers seeking sensational stories weren't doing the same. If by closing down the Sunday Scapegoat we can draw a neat line and leave other papers to get on with the job of ferreting out secrets by fair means or foul, then we are no further forward. And when News International grinds into action and produces a whole "new" Sunday paper to fill the gap, everything can continue undisturbed.

I wonder if journalists are about to become the new bankers, openly reviled by just about everyone. Everyone knows what journalists look like, haggard hacks with a foot in the door and a long lens hovering behind. I actually found this image genuinely confusing when I was a kid, unable to reconcile it with the mother and her red biro patiently correcting the spelling of Charollais in the weekly sheep sales report for a provincial weekly.

Now, I'm fairly sure (despite having never read it) that the NotW doesn't cover the local livestock marts in any great detail, but even a screaming red-top doesn't have a staff entirely of paps and hackers. I can't guess at how many of the people writing the sensationalist headlines knew what was going on with the voicemails of the famous or unfortunate, but I imagine there are departments at NotW who were carefully putting together this week's Fabulous magazine or writing film reviews who were wholly uninvolved and unaware. All these people are now going to lose their jobs - not to mention becoming the new hate figures everywhere they go - and that's not a cause for celebration.

ETA: And while I was writing this, news has started leaking out that the closure was announced to the press before the NotW staff. That is a shabby way to treat anyone, and does not incline me in any way to think better of News International.


[*] Yeah, surprised me too.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

And when News International grinds into action and produces a whole "new" Sunday paper to fill the gap, everything can continue undisturbed.

And there was me thinking I was being insightful. I'm so behind. Apparently thesunonsunday.co.uk was registered two days ago.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

I don't like the 'journalists are all evil' any more than I liked 'bankers are all evil', stereotyped group demonisation is just wrong.[1]
I do think that the forced removal of the brand does have some impact though. It may be mainly damage restriction from (Not)News Int but the fact they were forced to do it is still damage and from a financial point of view still a loss.
They are probably hoping it will work as a nice neat line under it all but there is still a promised (okay toothless, quiet) investigation and a significantly raised awareness of techniques that can be used by anybody - journalist or not - to invade personal privacy.

And they may have handled the news to the staff badly and not be known as a particularly nice corporation but I'd imagine many will get jobs on the Sunday Sun. Except hopefully the PIs hired to do the hacking and those who authorised the paying of them to do it.

[1]So is generalisation

[venta.livejournal.com]

I don't think many of them will find jobs on any new Sunday Sun-a-like. A paper wouldn't need to double in size just to go from 6 days to 7. Some will no don't find jobs there, but I really doubt there'll be more than a handful of positions created.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

The general news consensus seems to be there are about 200 NOTW employees vs about 51,000 in News Corp as a whole (admittedly that is a global number). Some of that 200 probably ought to be losing their jobs although I hope that is a small number and the combination of an organisation that size with other news openeings and a new addition to a paper with a new lot of Sunday branding and articles to produce ought to have to re-employ more than just a handful of them.
I am probably just being more optimistic about New Corp's response to the redundancies and the suitability of internal vacancies that can be applied for.

I hope the knee jerk reaction to save the BSkyB bid doesn't look as bad for the employees once a bit of time has passed.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I approve of your "News Int" abbreviation. I've been persistently wondering what Northern Ireland has to do with anything in various news reports all this week...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

If it's an attempt at @rse covering it's an awfully late one.

Indeed, it may backfire, because the message I take home from this is that James Murdoch had no problem with phone tapping of celebrities or heads would have rolled sooner.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have little grasp of how much a CEO of an umbrella organization would be expected to be directly involved in day to day running. I presume James Murdoch was hoping to be seen as the big guy stepping in because the company's own procedures were clearly failing. Like some kind of avuncular superhero :(

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

James Murdoch has previously announced that if there were payments he didn't know about them; now he's saying he signed them off personally. The fact that he's a person who makes mutually exclusive "true" statements won't be a surprise to anyone, of course.

(And I agree with your overall point; this is arse-covering intended to try and get through the rough patch without actually making any changes. I hope it fails.)

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

I doubt they can call it The Sunday Sun as there's been a paper of that name in the North-East from the Newcastle Chronicle/Journal stable.
Re the Press being told of NoW closure before the staff, that doesn't surprise me one bit, given the state of HR in the industry atm.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I wondered about the Sunday Sun and the name conflict, but it seems they're eyeing up "The Sun On Sunday"

[venta.livejournal.com]

Whoops, that was me.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Sheffield has a local paper called the Star, it doesn't seem to pose a problem.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Not the Daily Star, though?

[zotz]

it has been suggested that this was on the way anyway.

[kauket.livejournal.com]

*like*

[octalbunny.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if another paper is hacking the NotW. A lot of yesterday's news seemed oddly sourced, in a "we've heard that police may have contacted (group of victims)" way.

[killalla]

I don't know from journalism, but the quote is The Divine Comedy - Generation Sex.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

You may find this response from the National Union of Journalists of interest:
http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=2152

(in short, they accuse Murdoch of attempting to just make the whole scandal disappear by scapegoating junior staff whilst simultaneously removing an anti-trust objection to the BskyB deal).

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

^^^this.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yup, I think they said many of the things I wanted to. But better. And rather more well-informedly.

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

Surely journalists-as-evil are the new MPs-as-evil, who were the the new Bankers-as-evil.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

It was the best-selling English-language newspaper in the world, not just the best British Sunday.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Someone on twitter described it as "best-selling", but my cursory googling only turned up reliable-looking[*] descriptions of it as the best-selling Sunday paper.


[*] Why yes, I do mean "on Wikipedia".

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

I gather it used to be but has been overtaken by the Times of India. Wow, people in Japan buy a lot of newspapers.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

The figures from Japan are pretty unreliable: they inflate them by forcing distributors to take extra copies that remain unsold. But yes, they do like their papers there.

I think the ToI figures are also pretty dubious, but it certainly was coming up fast on the NotW, whether or not it had actually overtaken it. The trouble is that 'circulation' has many definitions, and it's hard to compare like with like across different countries.

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

Good point, and God knows how all the freebie copies that get given out on planes and trains affect the figures.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I imagine there are departments at NotW who were carefully putting together this week's Fabulous magazine or writing film reviews who were wholly uninvolved and unaware

How could they be unaware? It's been public knowledge for several years, since the Goodman/Mulcaire trial over Prince William's phone.

I have extremely limited sympathy for them. They may not have hacked themselves, but they were perfectly happy to have their wages paid by the known proceeds of hacking. Plus which, phone hacking is only the most extreme of the NotW's iniquities: it has a long history of grotesquely immoral journalistic practice.

If you choose to work for an evil scumrag, you have to take the rough with the smooth, I think.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I agree that the NotW has always been something of a journalistic abomination, and in other circumstances I'd be delighted that it was going away.

However, while I don't think I'd want to work for the NotW I don't think I'd be that quick to judge people who took a job where they could get it. And to be honest, I don't think I'd see those employees not directly involved as hugely more culpable than the millions of people who handed over cash every week to read the known results of hacking.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Sure, the buyers are culpable, absolutely. It will be interesting to see how many of them immediately switch to the Sun on Sunday.

But I don't think many NotW journalistic staff were in the position of accepting a job there out of desperate lack of alternatives. It was the top payer in the industry, and could pick and choose journalists as it pleased, headhunting star performers from other titles.

Although I probably am too quick to judge generally, in this case I think a bit of judgement is justified. Journalists who take high-paying jobs on evil tabloids in the pious hope that somehow it won't rub off on them shouldn't moan when the payoff eventually catches up. Moral compromise is often necessary, but there are lines beyond which one shouldn't go if one wishes to avoid culpability.

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

As soon as advertising started being pulled, this was inevitable. Papers need adverts.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible to celebrate the demise of something, without it meaning we support the job losses of innocents - I mean, even a really evil organisation might have someone somewhere who didn't know what was going on, but does that mean we could never celebrate its demise?

I think there's also the point some people (myself included) dislike tabloids like the NOTW for reasons more than the illegal phone hacking. I mean, when they run stories like this, I have the world's smallest violin for any NOTW employee now finding out that freebie Britain isn't so great after all. I know, not everyone involved wrote those stories - but they knowingly supported a paper that spread those stories.

(I first wrote that last sentence in the present tense, then realised, then rewrote in the past tense. Oh, what a good feeling that was!)

Sometimes people don't have a choice when it comes to jobs - but couldn't that same argument apply even to the journalists who do write the bad stories?

Re: your later comment about the buyers being responsible - yes, they are - but consider the people who buy the paper for the sport, reviews, etc...

I do agree though that The Sun or whatever will just take its place, and carry on much the same.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I think before the latest explosion of the phone hacking story, the rumour already was that News International was planning to merge the Sun and NotW operations into one newsroom - presumably this would have cost some jobs, and presumably some of its employees will be offered jobs elsewhere in the Murdoch empire, quite possibly at the Sun on Sunday, assuming it happens and whatever it's called - News Corp also owns sunday.co.uk

The NotW was always dodgy, long before Murdoch bought it. It's the paper that pays the most for exclusives, the paper that used to bribe police and pay serial killers for their stories. Apparently still does at least one of them.

So I think that closing it is a statement by Murdoch that he no longer wants to run a paper that is outright *supposed* to be dodgy. It's a branding decision - no doubt the Sun will do some dodgy stuff, just as a lot of papers do, but it isn't marketed as the paper full of shady hacks.