As you may have read, Sunday’s is the last edition of News of the World, the British tabloid that been sacrificed to the escalating News Corp scandal.
We got a tip that former News of the World journalists were setting up independent blogs and Twitter feeds. Tracy Delaney, the author of the Serennu astrology research website, scoped out some of those new content streams and is linking them together through a special Twitter feed, which she’s still adding to. If you hear of anything that belongs there, please let me know. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, here is a recap written by Reuters.
Here are some less sentimental tweets from News of the World’s detractors at #NOTW
Here is a BBC compilation of News of the World editors and News Corp executives issuing denial after denial at the parliamentary select committee hearings on phone hacking.
I was trying to explain to my friend Dominick yesterday what News of the World was, and a little about the culture of the British tabloids. There is absolutely no American equivalent (there is in Australia). These newspapers are like the The New York Post mated with National Enquirer digging into the lives of the most notable people in society, with no boundaries, no rules, no ethical framework, read by millions of people, pumped up on hormones and smoking some form of journalistic crack. My involvement in this culture happened over the course of four years as a horoscope writer standing in for Jonathan Cainer in two different titles, The Mail and The Mirror. These newspapers thrive in a viciously competitive environment that is digging for information any way that it can. The result can be all-out wars between the papers, with everyone being fair game.