For 168 years, the News of the World built its Sunday readership on stories of crime, scandal and sensation. Its history began with a cheap newspaper aimed at newly literate working-class readers and ended in 2011, after revelations of phone hacking prompted its owner to close it. The paper’s reach and its failures are inseparable parts of its place in British media.
A paper for a new readership
John Browne Bell first published the News of the World in London on 1 October 1843. It was a broadsheet, priced at three pence, and aimed directly at the newly literate working classes. Before the repeal of newspaper taxes, it was described as the cheapest newspaper of its time. Bell identified crime, sensation and vice as subjects likely to sell copies; coverage of prosecutions for vice supplied some of its early lurid material.
The paper quickly found readers, though its fortunes changed with the expanding newspaper market. Its initial sales were about 12,000 copies a week; the figure had risen to 24,100 by 1845 and 109,100 in 1854. Sales later fell after the paper did not reduce its price following the abolition of newspaper taxes. By 1880 it sold about 30,000 copies a week, but that represented a smaller share of a much larger market.
In 1891 the Bell family sold the title to Henry Lascelles Carr, who installed his nephew Emsley Carr as editor. Emsley remained in the post for 50 years. George Riddell helped drive commercial growth by reorganising national distribution through local agents. By 1912, circulation had reached two million; it was around three million in the early 1920s and four million by 1939. The newspaper’s motto, “All human life is there”, captured its expansive promise, even as the paper’s early focus on sensational subjects shaped what that promise meant in practice.
Growth, editions and sporting ties
The paper’s circulation continued to rise. In 1950 its weekly sale was reported at 8,441,000, making it the biggest-selling newspaper in the world at that point; individual editions sold more than nine million copies. It had become one of the best-known Sunday papers in Britain, while similar mass-market titles helped make popular newspapers a defining feature of the press.
Its reach was not confined to the printed news pages. The News of the World sponsored sporting competitions, including a golf match-play championship that began in 1903, a darts championship which became national in 1947, and a snooker championship held from 1950 to 1959. The Emsley Carr Mile, begun in 1953 in memory of the former editor, continues to be run annually. The paper also published a football annual, which it sponsored until 2008, as well as a household guide and almanac.
Production expanded beyond London. The paper began printing in Manchester in 1928 and later moved to Thomson House, Withy Grove. In 1985, after leaving that site, it briefly used the Daily Express presses before moving to a new plant at Knowsley on Merseyside. It was printed at sites across Britain and Ireland, with a separate Belfast edition, and also at locations abroad.
Murdoch ownership and tabloid identity
In 1969 the paper passed to Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd after a contest with Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press. Murdoch took control of the company following a shareholders’ meeting in January, and succeeded William Carr as chairman later that year. In 1984, as News Ltd reorganised into News International, the News of the World changed from broadsheet to tabloid. It became the Sunday sister paper of The Sun, and its reporting increasingly concentrated on celebrity scoops, gossip and populist news.
The paper’s appeal rested in part on an appetite for revelations about public figures. It gained a reputation for chequebook journalism, paying for stories about the private lives of people connected to politicians, celebrities and prominent criminal cases. It also faced libel actions and complaints about its newsgathering methods, including entrapment. Its undercover reporting included work by Mazher Mahmood, known as the “Fake Sheikh”. In 2011, the paper won British Press Awards, including awards connected to Mahmood’s reporting on cricket corruption. Such recognition sat uneasily alongside questions about the methods used to obtain stories.
That tension was visible well before the paper’s final years. In 1967 it ran a series on pop stars and drugs. A report about the Rolling Stones contributed to the arrests of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, though the reporter had been listening to an account concerning guitarist Brian Jones. Jagger and Richards were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, but released on bail pending appeal the following day; the appeal court later overturned Richards’s conviction and reduced Jagger’s sentence to a conditional discharge. The episode prompted protests against the newspaper and became an early example of the controversy that could follow its pursuit of sensation.
Scandal, closure and what followed
Allegations of phone hacking began to engulf the paper from 2006. In 2007 its royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, pleaded guilty to illegal interception of communications and was jailed for four months. Editor Andy Coulson resigned shortly before Goodman’s imprisonment. Further revelations in 2009 and 2010 raised questions about how widespread the practice had been within the newspaper and its parent company.
On 4 July 2011, it emerged that a private investigator hired by the newspaper had intercepted the voicemail of missing teenager Milly Dowler, who was later found murdered. The revelation intensified public anger. The paper had announced on 7 July that it would publish its final issue on 10 July, ending 168 years of publication. The final edition carried the headline “Thank You & Goodbye” above a collage of earlier front pages. Its editorial apologised for phone hacking and said there was no justification for the wrongdoing. The issue sold 3.8 million copies, about a million more than usual.
The closure did not end the wider story. Allegations that phones belonging to families of British service personnel killed in action had also been hacked deepened the scandal. Police investigations led to arrests of former editors and other senior figures. In February 2012, News International launched The Sun on Sunday, which employed some former News of the World journalists and served as a replacement Sunday title.
Why News of the World deserves a place in British Legacy
The News of the World deserves a place in British Legacy because its history illustrates both the scale and the hazards of mass-market journalism in Britain. Founded at a time when newspapers were reaching newly literate working-class readers, it developed from a three-penny broadsheet into a paper with a reported weekly sale of more than eight million in 1950. Its national distribution, multiple print sites and long association with sporting competitions show how a newspaper could become part of everyday public life beyond its news columns. The motto “All human life is there” expressed an ambition to address a broad readership; the paper’s record also shows how the pursuit of attention could shape its editorial choices.
Its final chapter matters for a different reason. Phone hacking and the revelations surrounding Milly Dowler’s voicemail made the means of producing a scoop as important as the story itself. The newspaper’s closure, the investigations that followed and the public response form part of Britain’s continuing debate about press accountability and privacy. Remembering the News of the World should therefore mean neither celebrating circulation as an uncomplicated achievement nor reducing nearly 170 years to one scandal. Its history offers a concrete account of popular journalism’s reach, commercial pressures and consequences when reporting crosses legal and ethical boundaries.
Sources
News of the World — Wikipedia revision 1379723921 · News of the World — Wikipedia
Adapted in part from News of the World by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.