Adriene Hill: Now to the U.K., where residents will have a new tabloid paper next weekend. Any guesses who’s behind it?
Yup. Rupert Murdoch. Apparently, he’s in a hurry to get back to his readers. Murdoch’s launching the new paper only seven months after Britan’s phone hacking scandal brought down News of the World.
From London, here’s the BBC’s Kate McGough.
Kate McGough: It’s not been a happy few months for Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. newspapers. Months of allegations over phone hacking led to the closure of the Sunday paper, the News Of The World. And some journalists at his weekday paper The Sun are currently being investigated over alleged illegal payments. So Murdoch’s announcement that he’s launching a weekend version of his U.K. tabloid called “The Sun on Sunday” came as a surprise to many.
David Wooding is the former political editor at the News of the World and now works at The Sun. He says Murdoch is just responding to a gap in the market.
David Wooding: The readership of the News of the World didn’t want that paper to close. They wanted the guilty people brought to justice, they wanted the people who had their phones hacked to be compensated. The only people who don’t want this new paper are the sort of people who didn’t buy it anyway.
And it’s good news for many former News of the World journalists, who’ll be hoping to get jobs at the new paper. Mr. Murdoch is staying in London to oversee the launch, hoping former News of the World readers will make his gamble pay off.
In London, I’m the BBC’s Kate McGough, for Marketplace.
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