The News of the World was a weekly national "red top" tabloid newspaper published every Sunday in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the world's highest-selling English-language newspaper and at closure still had one of the highest English-language circulations. It was established as a broadsheet by John Browne Bell, who identified crime, sensation, and vice as the themes that would sell most copies.Addley, Esther (7 July 2011). "The News of the World's sensational history", The Guardian (UK), Retrieved 24 June 2014. The Bells sold to Henry Lascelles Carr in 1891; in 1969, it was bought from the Carrs by Rupert Murdoch's media firm News Limited. In 1984, as News Limited reorganised into News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation, the newspaper transformed into a tabloid and became the Sunday sister paper of The Sun.
The News of the World concentrated in particular on celebrity scoops, gossip and populist news. Its somewhat prurient focus on sex scandals gained it the nickname Screws of the World. In its last decade it had a reputation for exposing celebrities' drug use, sexual peccadilloes, or criminal acts, by using insiders and journalists in disguise to provide video or photographic evidence, and covert phone hacking in ongoing police investigations. Sales averaged 2,812,005 copies per week in October 2010.
From 2006, allegations of phone hacking began to engulf the newspaper. These culminated in the revelation on 4 July 2011 that, nearly a decade earlier, a private investigator hired by the newspaper had intercepted the voicemail of missing British teenager Milly Dowler, who was later found murdered.
Amid a public backlash and the withdrawal of advertising, News International announced the closure of the newspaper on 7 July 2011. The scandal deepened when the paper was alleged to have hacked into the phones of families of British service personnel killed in action. Senior figures on the newspaper have been held for questioning by police investigating the phone hacking and corruption allegations, alongside former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan. Arrested on 8 July 2011 were former editor Andy Coulson and former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman, the latter jailed for phone hacking in 2007. The former executive editor Neil Wallis was arrested on 15 July 2011 and former editor Rebekah Brooks, the tenth person held in custody, on 17 July 2011.
During a visit to London on 17 February 2012, Murdoch announced he was soon to launch a Sunday edition of The Sun, which acted as a replacement to the News of the World. On 19 February 2012, it was announced that the first edition of The Sun on Sunday would be printed on 26 February 2012. It would employ some former News of the World journalists.
History
1843 to 1968 The newspaper was first published as The News of the World on 1 October 1843, by John Browne Bell in London. Priced at three pence (equal to £ in ), even before the repeal of the Stamp act (1855) or paper duty (1861), it was the cheapest newspaper of its time and was aimed directly at the newly literate working classes. It quickly established itself as a purveyor of titillation, shock, and criminal news. Much of the source material came from coverage of vice prosecutions, including lurid transcripts of police descriptions of alleged brothels, streetwalkers, and "immoral" women. In 1924 the newspaper sponsored the 1924 Women's Olympiad held at Stamford Bridge in London.
Before long, the News of the World established itself as the most widely read Sunday paper, with initial sales of around 12,000 copies a week. Circulation had grown to 24,100 by 1845 and was 109,100 in 1854. Sales then suffered because the price was not cut following the abolition of newspaper taxes and the paper was soon no longer among the leading Sunday titles, selling around 30,000 by 1880, a greater number but a smaller proportion, as newspaper sales had grown hugely. The title was sold by the Bell family in 1891 to Henry Lascelles Carr who owned the Welsh Western Mail. As editor, he installed his nephew Emsley Carr, who held the post for 50 years. The real engine of the paper's now quick commercial success, however, was George Riddell, who reorganised its national distribution using local agents. Matthew Engel, in his book Tickle the Public: One Hundred Years of the Popular Press (Gollancz, 1996), says that the News of the World of the 1890s was "a very fine paper indeed". The paper was not without its detractors, though. As one writer later related:
By 1912, the circulation was two million and around three million by the early 1920s. Sales reached four million by 1939. This success encouraged other similar newspapers, of which The Sunday People, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror are still being published.
In 1928, the paper began printing in Manchester on the presses of the News Chronicle in Derby Street, moving in 1960 into Thomson House, Withy Grove (formerly known as Kemsley House) when the News Chronicle closed. The move to Thomson House led to the immediate closure of the Empire News, a paper printed there and mainly circulating in the North of England and Wales with a circulation of about 2.5 million. Officially the Empire News and News of the World merged but Thomson House was already printing the Sunday Pictorial (to become the Sunday Mirror) and Sunday Times and did not have any further capacity with the News of the World arriving.
The paper's motto was "All human life is there". The paper's name was linked with sports events as early as 1903 when the golfing tournament The News of the World Match Play Championship began (now under British PGA auspices). The News of the World Darts Championship existed from 1927 on a regional basis and became a national tournament from 1947 to 1990. There was also a News of the World Championship in snooker from 1950 to 1959 which eclipsed the official professionals' competition for a number of years. In athletics, the Emsley Carr Mile race was started in 1953 in memory of the former editor, and is still run annually. The paper's Football Annual was a long-standing publication (sponsoring it until 2008), and a Household Guide and Almanac was also published at one time.
By 1950, the News of the World had become the biggest-selling newspaper in the world with a weekly sale of 8,441,000 and individual editions sold over 9 million copies.
As with other Sunday newspapers, the News of the World was published on Saturday whenever Christmas Day fell on Sunday.
Murdoch ownership The newspaper passed into the hands of Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd. in 1969, following a year-long struggle with Robert Maxwell's Pergamon Press. Maxwell's Czech origin, combined with his political opinions, provoked a hostile response to his bid from the Carrs and from the editor of the News of the World, Stafford Somerfield, who declared in an October 1968 front page leading article attacking MaxwellBill Grundy "The Press: Mr Maxwell and the Ailing Giant", The Spectator, 24 October 1968, p. 6. that the paper was "as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding".Roy Greenslade Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits From Propaganda, London: Pan, 2004 , p. 395.
News Ltd. arranged to swap shares in some of its minor ventures with the Carrs and by December it controlled 40% of the NOTW stock. Maxwell had been supported by the Jackson family (25% shareholders), but Murdoch had gained the support of the Carr family (30%) and then-chairman William Carr.
In January 1969, Maxwell's bid was rejected at a shareholders' meeting where half of those present were company staff, temporarily given voting shares. It was Murdoch's first Fleet Street acquisition. Maxwell accused Murdoch of employing "the laws of the jungle" to acquire the paper and said he had "made a fair and bona fide offer... which has been frustrated and defeated after three months of [cynical] manoeuvring." Murdoch denied this, arguing the shareholders of the News of the World Group had "judged [his] record in Australia." Illness removed Sir William Carr from the chairmanship in June 1969, and Murdoch succeeded him.
Murdoch came under severe criticism in a television interview with David Frost after the newspaper published extracts, in late summer 1969, from the memoirs of Christine Keeler. Keeler had been a central figure in the Profumo scandal which had emerged to public scrutiny in 1963. Murdoch regretted agreeing to the interview with Frost.Jerome Tuccille Rupert Murdoch: Creator of a Worldwide Media Empire, Washington: Beard Books, 2003 , pp. 29–30. In February 1970, Stafford Somerfield was dismissed as editor after coming into conflict with Murdoch, whose takeover he had opposed."'News of the World' editor sacked", Glasgow Herald, 27 February 1970, p. 26.
During the four decades of Murdoch's ownership, the newspaper had to frequently defend itself against libel charges as well as complaints to the Press Council (later the Press Complaints Commission) on accusations of certain news-gathering techniques, such as entrapment, and contentious campaigns. Some of the better-known of these were the "Bob and Sue" case with reporter Neville Thurlbeck, and various cases involving journalist Mazher Mahmood.
The newspaper, which had generally supported the Conservative Party throughout its history (endorsing Edward Heath in the 1970 and both 1974 elections), maintained its political posture during the early years of the Murdoch era, whereas its weekday sister The Sun did not have a definitive allegiance, (supporting Harold Wilson's Labour Party in 1970, Heath in February 1974 and Jeremy Thorpe's Liberal Party in October 1974) until the late 1970s when it became a strong supporter of the Conservative Party. Both newspapers later endorsed Tony Blair's New Labour during the late 1990s and early 2000s before switching back to the Conservatives during David Cameron's leadership.
Starting in 1981, a magazine supplement (Sunday) was included with the paper and, in 1984, the newspaper changed from broadsheet to tabloid format. The paper was printed in Hertfordshire, Liverpool, Dinnington near Sheffield, Portsmouth, Glasgow and Dublin, with a separate edition produced in Belfast. It was also printed at a number of sites abroad including Madrid, Brussels, Cyprus and Orlando in Florida, US.
In 1985, the News of the World moved out of Thomson House when the building was bought by the tycoon Robert Maxwell (and renamed Maxwell House) and, after a short spell on the Daily Express presses in Great Ancoats Street, moved to a new plant at Knowsley on Merseyside.
In 2011 the then editor, Colin Myler, described it as "the greatest newspaper in the world" as it had won four awards at the British Press Awards. The award for News Reporter of the Year, went to Mazher Mahmood, the "fake sheikh" who hides his identity, for his exposé of corruption in the cricketing world. The paper also won top show-business reporter and magazine of the year.
End of publication It was announced on 7 July 2011 that, after 168 years in print, the newspaper would print its final edition on 10 July 2011 following revelations of the ongoing phone hacking scandal, with the loss of 200 jobs. The paper announced that all profits from the final edition – 74 pence out of the £1 cover price – would go to "good causes", and advertising space would be given to charities; the remaining 26 pence for each copy went to retailers selling the paper and to wholesalers. Shutting the newspaper cost News Group Newspapers around £240m.
The government of the United Kingdom said it had no role in the decision. James Murdoch claimed that the company was fully co-operating with ongoing police investigations.