Don't Mourn the End of Murdoch's Tabloid

The general reaction to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s decision to shut down the 168-year-old British weekly, News of the World, is that it’s something of a journalistic tragedy.

In my uninformed view, it’s more blessing than tragedy.

It was a professional, competent, catchy, powerful and widely-read newspaper, but it was also an awful newspaper.

Hacking into private phone calls and intruding into criminal cases, secretly feeding off relatives on soldiers killed in Afghanistan, bribing cops and chequebook journalism, were all standard fare for the newspaper, that boasted the largest circulation of any newspaper in Britain, at 2.7 million copies per Sunday.

That’s pretty impressive, but it’s still a decline from the 9 million or so who bought the paper around the time that Rupert Murdoch did in 1969.

The last edition of paper on Sunday – headlined “Thank You and Goodbye” – apparently sold a solid five million copies. People bought it either as an investment for future value, or for nostalgic pack-rat reasons.

Mourning in the journalistic industry is rampant. Something like 600 employees who put out the paper, are now unemployed.

Murdoch, whose bid to buyout the TV networkk BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting) was once considered a slam-dunk, is now in jeopardy as a government inquiry into the News of the World scandal may find that Murdoch’s ownership is not in the public interest.

Of the closing, Murdoch said: “We’ve been let down by people that we trusted, with the result that the paper let down its readers.” That’s both cynical and hypocritical.

Once again, it’s reporters who are blamed for the hacking. Also the editors, past and subsequent, who approved the hacking that dates back five years. Plus the paying off police—arguably the most sinister and distressing aspect of the case.

Reporters basically do what their bosses demand of them. Unscrupulous bosses (editors and proprietors) produce unscrupulous reporters. This is what the News of the World’s loyalist fan base wanted and expected.

Journalists unwilling to indulge in keyhole journalism, or dabble in the lascivious exaggerations the newspaper relished, went elsewhere for jobs.

Like the old National Enquirer – before it gained respectability for its oft-uncanny accuracy – those who worked for it were adept and innovative journalists, prepared to make compromises many of their colleagues on other publications were not.

Individually, reporters for the News of the World were competent. And most on the last payroll who are now casualties, weren’t involved in the hacking or police- payoffs.

Still, the paper had the reputation of paying huge amounts for lurid stories – the more salacious, the more money. Chequebook journalism and all that.

Ironically, Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal (in my vew the world’s most sensible newspaper) and the London Times, which exudes respectability.

Murdoch also owns the British Sun, which I once worked for in Moscow, before Murdoch purchased it and introduced topless Sunshine girls and made the paper Britain’s dominant tabloid.

It’s now expected the News of the World may be blended into the Sunday Sun, perhaps employing some the News of the World staff. Maybe this hinges on whether Murdoch gets BSkyB.

Maybe, just maybe, euthanasia of News of the World was a brilliant marketing move to get rid of a paper that was in decline, whose audience had progressed beyond the sensationalism the paper provided for so long?

If so, the tears are more crocodile than real.