News of the World: What was it like on the inside? (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

The News of the World has published its last edition after 168 years. It marks the end of a newspaper where the journalists would get the stories at any cost, writes Dan Arnold, an investigative reporter at the paper from 1994 to 1996.

"We want exclusives, not excuses," one of the many mantras at the News of the World.

Journalism is notoriously a high-pressure business, but the NoW was its own special pressure cooker of fear and rivalry.

"Get the story at any cost, we pay more than anyone else," that was the basic premise at the start of any story.

I was authorised to offer a binman {garbage collector} £25,000 in cash, a new car and a holiday for his story.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14078182




Worth a read -- the label of "tabloid" introduces some prejudices which can mislead, badly. These were not the same sort of people who publish supermarket tabloids in the US. They threw big resources at their stories, all in the hope of digging up any dirt they could find. And as everyone now knows, they had a stronger political agenda than anything in the US outside of the John Birch Society newsletter.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. So this is how FOX NEWS works, more than likely. nt