News of the World

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 originally established as a broadsheet by John Browne Bell, who identified crime, sensation and vice as the themes that would sell most copies. 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. Reorganised into News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation, the newspaper was transformed into a tabloid in 1984 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. 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