A former editor of the Sunday Express is trying to get together a consortium to breath life back into the News of the World.
Susan Douglas reckons…
“I think News of the World readers want the News of the World, and the team that produces it is still extant and haven’t done anything inappropriate or unlawful as far as we know,” she said. “The News of the World’s trouble is really about misdemeanours of management. People talk about prurience and invading people’s privacy but when it’s in the public interest, it’s completely justified. I think there will be mounting public opinion behind anyone who tried to save the News of the World on that basis.”
Well, the current staff may not have done anything unlawful, alledgedly, saying they haven’t done anything inappropriate is pushing it a bit, as Charlie Brooker points out (my emphasis)…
The centre pages consist of a gallery of their “greatest hits”: curiously underwhelming when it’s all laid out. The Profumo scandal and Jeffrey Archer are in there, but so are three “gotcha!” snaps of celebs snorting coke – one of whom, Kerry Katona, was captured by a camera hidden in her own bathroom. Call me squeamish, but I’d say concealing a lens in a woman’s bathroom is worse than hacking her phone. At least voicemails can’t reveal which hand she wipes her arse with.
Also nestled amongst the roster of glorious front pages – JACKO’S DEATHBED: a photograph of the rumpled sheets on which Michael Jackson died. Yum! Proud of that, are they? Why, yes: hence its inclusion in their farewell souvenir. At least they didn’t include a little collectible square of his skin.
The News of the World readers may still want the News of the World, is someone that used to head the Sunday Express and the NotWs’ current staff the best people to revive the title as a “responsible investigative newspaper”?
The NotW readers probably don’t want to read a “responsible” paper anyway.
h/t Jon Slattery
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