A mourning nation weeps, and wails, but keeps the sales of evil tabloids healthy

[venta]

So, as of this weekend, Britain's best-selling Sunday newspaper[*] will cease publication.

Comments

[venta]

And when News International grinds into action and produces a whole "new" Sunday paper to fill the gap, everything can continue undisturbed.

And there was me thinking I was being insightful. I'm so behind. Apparently thesunonsunday.co.uk was registered two days ago.

[leathellin]

I don't like the 'journalists are all evil' any more than I liked 'bankers are all evil', stereotyped group demonisation is just wrong.[1]
I do think that the forced removal of the brand does have some impact though. It may be mainly damage restriction from (Not)News Int but the fact they were forced to do it is still damage and from a financial point of view still a loss.
They are probably hoping it will work as a nice neat line under it all but there is still a promised (okay toothless, quiet) investigation and a significantly raised awareness of techniques that can be used by anybody - journalist or not - to invade personal privacy.

And they may have handled the news to the staff badly and not be known as a particularly nice corporation but I'd imagine many will get jobs on the Sunday Sun. Except hopefully the PIs hired to do the hacking and those who authorised the paying of them to do it.

[1]So is generalisation

[venta]

I don't think many of them will find jobs on any new Sunday Sun-a-like. A paper wouldn't need to double in size just to go from 6 days to 7. Some will no don't find jobs there, but I really doubt there'll be more than a handful of positions created.

[leathellin]

The general news consensus seems to be there are about 200 NOTW employees vs about 51,000 in News Corp as a whole (admittedly that is a global number). Some of that 200 probably ought to be losing their jobs although I hope that is a small number and the combination of an organisation that size with other news openeings and a new addition to a paper with a new lot of Sunday branding and articles to produce ought to have to re-employ more than just a handful of them.
I am probably just being more optimistic about New Corp's response to the redundancies and the suitability of internal vacancies that can be applied for.

I hope the knee jerk reaction to save the BSkyB bid doesn't look as bad for the employees once a bit of time has passed.

[venta]

Incidentally, I approve of your "News Int" abbreviation. I've been persistently wondering what Northern Ireland has to do with anything in various news reports all this week...

[bateleur]

If it's an attempt at @rse covering it's an awfully late one.

Indeed, it may backfire, because the message I take home from this is that James Murdoch had no problem with phone tapping of celebrities or heads would have rolled sooner.

[venta]

I have little grasp of how much a CEO of an umbrella organization would be expected to be directly involved in day to day running. I presume James Murdoch was hoping to be seen as the big guy stepping in because the company's own procedures were clearly failing. Like some kind of avuncular superhero :(

[tigerfort]

James Murdoch has previously announced that if there were payments he didn't know about them; now he's saying he signed them off personally. The fact that he's a person who makes mutually exclusive "true" statements won't be a surprise to anyone, of course.

(And I agree with your overall point; this is arse-covering intended to try and get through the rough patch without actually making any changes. I hope it fails.)

[exspelunca]

I doubt they can call it The Sunday Sun as there's been a paper of that name in the North-East from the Newcastle Chronicle/Journal stable.
Re the Press being told of NoW closure before the staff, that doesn't surprise me one bit, given the state of HR in the industry atm.

[exspelunca]

Yes, I wondered about the Sunday Sun and the name conflict, but it seems they're eyeing up "The Sun On Sunday"

[venta]

Whoops, that was me.

[feanelwa]

Sheffield has a local paper called the Star, it doesn't seem to pose a problem.

[zotz]

it has been suggested that this was on the way anyway.