For 168 years, the British Sunday morning had a very specific ritual. You’d head to the corner shop, grab a pint of milk, and pick up a copy of the News of the World newspaper. It was loud. It was lurid. It was, at its height, the biggest-selling English-language newspaper on the planet.
Then, in July 2011, it just stopped.
The closure wasn’t some slow, agonizing decline due to the internet or falling ad revenue, though those were looming in the background. It was a sudden, violent death triggered by a scandal so toxic it threatened the entire Murdoch empire. Honestly, if you weren't living in the UK at the time, it’s hard to describe the sheer whiplash of seeing a national institution vanish in a week.
The Rise of the "Screws of the World"
Founded in 1843 by John Browne Bell, the paper always knew its audience. Bell basically figured out that if you gave the working class a mix of crime, vice, and celebrity gossip at a cheap price, they’d buy it in droves. He wasn't wrong. By the 1950s, the paper was shifting over 8 million copies every single Sunday.
Think about that number for a second. In a pre-digital age, that’s a level of cultural penetration modern influencers can only dream of.
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The nickname "Screws of the World" didn't come from nowhere. It was a nod to its obsession with "bedroom gymnastics" and "kiss-and-tell" stories. If a politician was having an affair or a footballer was behaving badly in a nightclub, the News of the World found out. They didn't just report news; they manufactured it. They used "sting" operations, often led by the infamous "Fake Sheikh" Mazher Mahmood, who would dress in traditional Arab robes to trick celebrities into admitting to drug deals or criminal plots.
When the Phone Hacking Scandal Broke Everything
The beginning of the end started small. Back in 2006, the paper’s royal editor, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator named Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for hacking the voicemails of royal aides. For years, the official line from News International—the parent company owned by Rupert Murdoch—was that this was a "one rogue reporter" situation.
They lied.
The real explosion happened in July 2011 when The Guardian reported that the paper hadn't just hacked celebrities or politicians. They had hacked the phone of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and murdered in 2002.
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It was horrific.
Reporters had allegedly deleted voicemails on her phone to make room for more, which gave her parents the false hope that she was still alive and checking her messages. The public backlash was instant and total. Advertisers like Ford, Mitsubishi, and Lloyds TSB pulled their slots. Within days, James Murdoch announced that the July 10, 2011 edition would be the paper's last.
The Last Edition: "Thank You and Goodbye"
The final issue of the News of the World newspaper was a strange piece of history. Usually, a paper that dies does so because nobody wants it. This one sold 3.8 million copies—a million more than its usual circulation—as people scrambled for a souvenir of the disaster.
The front page was a simple montage of old scoops with the headline: "THANK YOU & GOODBYE." Inside, the editorial was apologetic but defensive. It claimed that the paper had "lost its way" but reminded everyone of the good it had done, like the anti-paedophile campaigns and the exposure of cricket match-fixing. But the damage was done. The Leveson Inquiry followed, exposing the cozy, sometimes incestuous relationship between the British press, the police, and the government.
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What Replaced It?
Rupert Murdoch isn't exactly known for leaving a gap in the market for long. Just a few months after the closure, he launched The Sun on Sunday.
Basically, it was the same staff, the same building, and many of the same readers, just under a different masthead. It was a rebranding exercise to save the business. While the News of the World newspaper is gone, its DNA—that tabloid hunger for the scoop at any cost—is still very much alive in the UK's media landscape.
Lessons from the Fallout
If you're looking at this from a business or journalistic perspective, the death of the paper wasn't just about ethics. It was a lesson in brand toxicity.
- Public sentiment can override profit: The paper was still profitable when it shut down. The "brand" simply became so radioactive that it threatened Murdoch’s multibillion-pound bid for BSkyB.
- Privacy laws changed forever: The scandal led to a massive tightening of how journalists can gather information. The "dark arts" of the 90s and 2000s—blagging, hacking, and bribing—became far more dangerous for reporters to attempt.
- The "Rogue Reporter" defense is a myth: If there’s systemic rot in an organization, it eventually reaches the top. The fallout saw editors like Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson (who had become David Cameron's communications chief) hauled before courts.
If you want to understand the modern media, you have to look at the News of the World newspaper as a cautionary tale. It shows how a 168-year legacy can be deleted in 72 hours if you lose the trust of your readers—or more importantly, your advertisers.
To see how the industry changed, you should look into the Leveson Report and the subsequent creation of IPSO (the Independent Press Standards Organisation). Most of the "wild west" tactics used by the paper are now strictly prohibited, though the appetite for celebrity scandal remains as high as ever. If you're researching this for a project or out of curiosity, start by comparing the final 2011 issue with the first issue of The Sun on Sunday to see how much—or how little—actually changed in the editorial tone.