[Update] The News Corp scandal

[Chris]

Originally Posted by Damien

I understand they are different. I just never understood why such an arrangement existed in the first place. I am guessing that historically the Sunday papers were around longer and were bigger. As time goes on I would have thought it's not fiscally sensible to continue to staff two separate papers, especially when the latter is sold just once a week.

Your assumption appears to be based on the erroneous assumption that staff on a weekly paper basically do nothing all week, and spring into action mid-morning each Saturday.

As a matter of fact there may once have been a fair bit of truth in that, but Murdoch put paid to a lot of the old practices.

Any weekly paper will have staff levels set at the level appropriate to the pattern of work during the week. There could well be a degree of shared workload when it comes to filing inconsequential bits and pieces of news copy that fill the gaps on the pages in the daily and the Sunday papers, but the bulk of the work on a Sunday paper is the big-hitting investigative stuff and there's no substitute for man hours when it comes to pulling all that together (especially now they can no longer gather their information by simply blagging, or hacking voicemails).

---------- Post added at 23:28 ---------- Previous post was at 22:10 ----------

Breaking: Sun on Sunday launches this coming weekend.

---------- Post added at 23:30 ---------- Previous post was at 23:28 ----------

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17092863

[Digital Fanatic]

Yuk! The Sun is a vile paper.. the last thing we need is a Sunday edition

[Chris]

It's still difficult to tell, but from the article on the Sun website it's looking like they're going for a seventh daily edition rather than a traditional Sunday paper.

[Digital Fanatic]

Originally Posted by Chris

It's still difficult to tell, but from the article on the Sun website it's looking like they're going for a seventh daily edition rather than a traditional Sunday paper.

Well, I won't be buying it, so it makes no odds to me

[denphone]

Originally Posted by Digital Fanatic

Well, I won't be buying it, so it makes no odds to me

l never bought it after the Hillsborough disaster and l sure ain't buying it now either.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

Not quite the same experience as my step father then, who's experience includes:
Reporter
Political editor for a newspaper
Editor of two local papers
Editor of a national magazine
Press officer to the leader of a major political party
Press officer for the BBC

Interesting cv your step father has, my grandfather was a sub editor on the Times for 20 odd years and held the same position at the Express and IIRC Telelgraph for many years at a time to and some of my sister and I's fondest childhood memories are of creating havoc down Fleet Street way and you know what I know about news papers, bugger all except how to read them.

[Damien]

Anyway, The Sun on Sunday will be sold this coming...err..Sunday. I don't really agree with the outrage over it, they are entitled to publish a paper on Sunday. The time since the closure of the NOTW combined with the loss of a big name brand means this wasn't a cynical ploy either.

[heero_yuy]

Prior to its closure, and stretching back 50 years, the NoW had the highest average issue readership of any national Sunday newspaper.

Its final published NRS estimate, for the six months from January to June this year, was 7,217,000 adults.

Some 60% of that total (4,342,000) did not read any other Sunday newspaper. Of those who did, 16% also read the Sunday Mirror, 11% the Mail on Sunday, 9% The People and 6% the Daily Star Sunday.

However, it appears that many of the 4.3m solo readers of NoW have dropped out of the market altogether.

A potential market of 4.3m readers is not a small prize to go for and they might be able to lure back the readers who went to another Sunday title. Plenty of those I'd wager are not anti Sun.


Source

[Maggy J]

I don't think Murdoch is a fit and proper person to be in charge of any part of his media empire.However I suspect that he'll emerge battered,tainted but uncharged after all the investigations and inquiries have finished.Everyone else will have their reputations shredded though as a sacrifice.

What I am hoping is that politicians have learned the lesson that getting too cosy with any journalist/newspaper/media organisation is not a good idea and that perhaps not sleeping around/having a hand in the public till/committing fraud might actually keep them clear of being manipulated by said media as a consequence.

I'm also hoping that the Met and other police forces will get their houses in order and finally sort out the corruption that has crept into their ranks because of the media and that the rest of us will start to take the idea of data protection rather more seriously than we do now.

[heero_yuy]

I don't think any group or individuals emerge untainted by this. As you say, I think they'll all be a bit more careful about being so cosy with each-other, at least for a while.

Whilst not defending Murdoch's practices or those of his papers, we must remember that without his money and drive it's unlikely that BSkyB would be a serious contender in the broadcast field and that we would all be the poorer for that.

[Maggy J]

Originally Posted by heero_yuy

I don't think any group or individuals emerge untainted by this. As you say, I think they'll all be a bit more careful about being so cosy with each-other, at least for a while.

Whilst not defending Murdoch's practices or those of his papers, we must remember that without his money and drive it's unlikely that BSkyB would be a serious contender in the broadcast field and that we would all be the poorer for that.

We are the poorer for it..Because of his dominance the only true contender against his influence, public broadcasting in the shape of the BBC has been emasculated due to his influence on successive governments.

[gba93]

Originally Posted by Maggy J

We are the poorer for it..Because of his dominance the only true contender against his influence, public broadcasting in the shape of the BBC has been emasculated due to his influence on successive governments.

[heero_yuy]

Originally Posted by Maggy J

We are the poorer for it..Because of his dominance the only true contender against his influence, public broadcasting in the shape of the BBC has been emasculated due to his influence on successive governments.

However, an enlarged News Corp would still have been smaller than the BBC – with News Corp's 22% "share of reference" for news consumption across newspapers and television, compared with the BBC's 37%. BBC News output was consumed by 81% of Britons each week, whereas 51% would have consumed news from either News Corp or Sky each week if the companies had merged fully.

source

Hardly emasculated with a garanteed income, backed up by the law, every government of recent times extending the charter seemingly on-the-nod and an 81% news takeup.

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by heero_yuy

source

Hardly emasculated with a garanteed income, backed up by the law, every government of recent times extending the charter seemingly on-the-nod and an 81% news takeup.

The problem is that the BBC is more or less on a fixed budget due to it's income coming from license fees. BSkyB has it's hands free to operate more as a business.

This is why the BBC funding is outdated, and TV licenses need to be scrapped.

[Alan Fry]

Originally Posted by Maggy J

Historically the NOTW was not a sister Sunday paper for the Sun.If it had been it would have been called The Sunday Sun or the Sun on Sunday.

It was called the name it had carried for 168 years.The News of the World.

Well It had become a Sunday edition of The Sun from 1969 until 2011, The Sun on Sunday is the sucessor to the NOTW!

---------- Post added at 12:13 ---------- Previous post was at 12:11 ----------

Originally Posted by Maggy J

I don't think Murdoch is a fit and proper person to be in charge of any part of his media empire.However I suspect that he'll emerge battered,tainted but uncharged after all the investigations and inquiries have finished.Everyone else will have their reputations shredded though as a sacrifice.

What I am hoping is that politicians have learned the lesson that getting too cosy with any journalist/newspaper/media organisation is not a good idea and that perhaps not sleeping around/having a hand in the public till/committing fraud might actually keep them clear of being manipulated by said media as a consequence.

I'm also hoping that the Met and other police forces will get their houses in order and finally sort out the corruption that has crept into their ranks because of the media and that the rest of us will start to take the idea of data protection rather more seriously than we do now.

I still bet he will come back and takeover BSkyB!