And on the Seventh Day Murdoch Created…

[Clippy]

Apologies for the double-post but thought this was worth it.

How Rebekah's clueless proofreaders failed to spot parting shot in NotW crossword.

Aware that News of the World staff might use their final edition to fire a parting shot at her, Rebekah Brooks is said to have instructed two senior executives to read the paper with a ‘fine toothcomb’.

According to sources, they received the simple instruction to ‘ensure there were no libels or any hidden mocking messages of the chief executive’ of News International.

However, while the news pages may have been sanitised of any subliminal messages, the proofreaders appear to have failed to spot some less subtle jibes in the crossword section.

Among the clues in the ‘Quicky’ puzzle were: ‘Brook’, ‘stink’, ‘catastrophe’, ‘digital protection’, ‘cease’, ‘lamented’, ‘servant’ and ‘prestige’.

The Cryptic Crossword was perhaps even more sardonic, with clues including: ‘Criminal enterprise, ‘mix in prison’, ‘string of recordings’, ‘will fear new security measure’.

[Clippy]

No. I stopped buying it regularly about a two years ago. To be honest there was a lack of any decent stories(probably because they'd stopped hacking phones).

I cannot tell a lie. As much as I dislike the papers politics and outrageous racist sensationalism I now buy the Mail On Sunday because it's Money section is actually very good.

Would have to agree with this quote from an excellent piece in The Observer today:

Talk to former News of the World journalists and ask where it all went wrong and they are likely to start with Phil Hall. The combative hack, who now runs his own PR company, started his career on the Dagenham Post and became the News of the World editor in 1995. Hall inherited a paper with a circulation above four million that enjoyed a formidable reputation as a gutsy breaker of big stories. Some were famously salacious, but many involved exposés of the great and the not-so-good, big league criminals, dodgy politicians and corrupt officials.

"It was a proper paper 20 years ago," one former employee told the Observer. "We turned over drug dealers, immigration rackets, things like that. Really good, hard-hitting stories. It also made people laugh; there was lots of fun stuff in it. Sure, there was a touch of spin to it all, but the stories were genuine. We were not saints. We bent things, but it was only to get the guys who deserved to be got."

Part of the paper's success lay in the near symbiotic relationship it enjoyed with the police, the two institutions swapping tip-offs and working together on major stories that ensured a win-win for all involved: the cops got the glory; the paper the headline.

But after Hall came in things went in a different direction. Journalists were under increasing pressure to bring in stories. "The focus became celebrity and then all the other papers followed and so it became even more competitive," the former hack said.

[MarillionFan]

So, did anyone buy a copy of the last ever NoTW?

No. I stopped buying it regularly about a two years ago. To be honest there was a lack of any decent stories(probably because they'd stopped hacking phones).

I cannot tell a lie. As much as I dislike the papers politics and outrageous racist sensationalism I now buy the Mail On Sunday because it's Money section is actually very good.

[Clippy]

So, did anyone buy a copy of the last ever NoTW?

[thunderlizard]

That'll go nicely with www.sunday.co.uk

[hyperD]

From Guido



A phoenix is born from the furore of the progressive liberal MSM's gnashing and wailing of Murdoch/BSkyB baiting...