So news publishing history was made on Sunday with the demise of the News of the World but so what?
I know it’s sad that many journalists and support staff have lost their jobs at short notice but do we really need the News of the World? Is there now a gap in the market where the newspaper leaves off?
Well I’m confident that many of the journalists will find other work, the newspaper industry is renowned for its flexibility in the workforce. As a result of the closure it’s likely that other Sunday papers will take a larger market share and this should open up opportunities.
But the point of this is that News International has been planning a Sunday Sun for a little while now. Even Rebekah Brookes indicated that NI was preparing for 7 day reporting as much a 2 months ago. So the signs have been there.
However, further to the NOTW allegations, it seems that the Sun and Sunday Times have been implicated in further scandals with Gordon Brown accusing the Sunday Times of colluding with criminals and gaining access to his son’s medical records and possibly his own tax and financial details too.
So it seems that News International have even more bad publicity to deal with from 2 more of their publications. Closing NOTW hasn’t had what they hoped would be something akin to closure on the phone hacking and data security scandals.
By now, even Rupert Murdoch must be wondering what to do next and it’s almost certain that his proposed takeover of BSkyB is dead in the water. He owns a lot of the news media in the UK but there’s still enough force amongst the rest of the field to keep scandal inflamed for some time.
There is also speculation (and a good few voices in parliament fuelling this) that the government are considering legislation to regulate the amount of news media share that any single organisation can own and influence. Not a bad thing in my view.
So, should we lament the passing of the News of the World? Definitely not!
Is anything likely to improve for News International any time soon? I certainly hope not!