LONDON — Reporters leaving the newsroom of The News of the World for the final time on Saturday night were told by the police to leave their desks, including their notebooks, untouched. They were allowed to keep only their cellphones.
With that, the 168-year-old News of the World came to an end, brought down by a scandal over the interception of voicemail messages that is rocking Britain’s media, its police force and government, and threatens the empire of a previously unassailable mogul. The final edition included an apology to readers for the newspaper losing its way, as well as a defiant claim to being the “world’s greatest.”
As staff members filed out one-by-one, the newspaper’s editor Colin Myler reprised a tradition that goes back to the glory days of British journalism, a time before voicemail, when storied publications like The News of the World were based around Fleet Street in the City of London and reported on Britain’s sprawling empire. He stood at a desk and struck it with a ruler as he looked each staff member in the eye, an emphatic farewell known as “banging out”.
Several staff members said that they expected the police would soon turn their beloved newspaper into a crime scene as investigations into the hacking scandal gained momentum.
Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/world/europe/11world.html
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