News Corporation’s 168-year UK tabloid, the ‘News of the World’ will close this weekend as revelations continue over its involvement in phone-hacking.
The top-selling newspaper with the tagline ‘all the news that’s fit to print’ will publish its last issue on Sunday. An announcement by James Murdoch, who heads the European operations for News International, follows three days of extraordinary revelations about phone hacking and alleged pay-offs to police.
The final edition will be printed without advertisements, and money from sales will go to charity. About 200 jobs will be lost.
The decision came only hours after the UK government announced it would put off until September a decision on whether to allow Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to purchase the rest of pay-TV giant BSkyB in a deal estimated at around £12 billion.
Reports that News International may launch a Sunday edition of ‘The Sun’ have been denied by the company, but it is understood domain names thesunonsunday.co.uk and the thesunonsunday.com have been registered in recent days.
Murdoch bought the ‘News of the World’ in 1969 in a deal with the Carr family, against competition from Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press.