All about the United Kingdom’s national, regional and local press

News of the World (defunct)

The News of the World was the Sunday sister of The Sun, after Rupert Murdoch acquired both newspapers in 1969. It was by far the older of the two papers, starting publication in 1843 priced at just 3d (1.125p in today’s money, without of course taking inflation into account), and was the English-speaking world’s biggest-selling Sunday newspaper at the time of its demise.

From the outset it was aimed at the working class readership, and pitched its news coverage accordingly – a collection of sensational news pruriently presented, about crime, scandal and sex. Also known as “News Of The Screws”, “Screws Of The World” or – at least in earlier times – the “Whore’s Gazette”.

What little hard news there was was presented from a right-wing point of view.

It was also aggressively populist; one of its most controversial yet popular campaigns in its final years was its demand that the public should have access to the Sex Offenders Register. Following its initial “name and shame” campaign, mobs hounded a number of innocent people in the belief that they were paedophiles.

There was a separate edition for Scotland, the Scottish News of the World.

The NotW moved behind a paywall in October 2010, leaving The Sun as the only Murdoch-owned British newspaper free to general access.

On 7 July 2011 News International‘s chairman, James Murdoch, announced that the News of the World would cease publication after a final edition on Sunday 10 July, in the wake of overwhelmingly damaging allegations of illegal phone-tapping by NotW journalists.
In the News: News of the Screwed

In February 2012 News International eventually replaced it, as had been widely predicted, with a Sunday edition of The Sun.

Although there is a website at the URL below, it consists just of one page bearing the NotW masthead and the front page “Thank you and goodbye” message from the final edition.