It really is the end of the World
Monday 11th July 2011, 2:29PM BST.
THE last-ever edition of Sunday red-top the News of the World was snapped up yesterday by those wanting a piece of history.
Checkers Xpress in Town ordered 25 more than its normal 50 to satisfy the extra demand as 600 extra copies came into the island.
Holidaymaker Jane de la Mare, 62 (pictured), said she did not normally buy the paper.
‘I’ve only got it because of the historical significance.’
- Read the full story in the Guernsey Press. Click here for subscription details. Individual editions are now available online.
- To read Guernsey Press stories in full click here for subscription details. Individual editions are now available online.
Island Life
All about Guernsey
Ambassador of the Year 2011
History & Heritage
Visitor Information
Guernsey's government
Campaigns
Voice For Victims
Voice for Victims is a campaign aimed at promoting the rights of those affected by child sexual abuse.
This is Guernsey
Guernsey Press
Useful Links
So let’s get this right – NOTW are shown to have done something despicable and there is an internet campaign to boycott it, and companies pull their advertising, all in disgust at what NOTW represents.
Murdoch then closes down NOTW as a reaction to the public mood of disgust.
The public then change their mood and rush out in their droves to buy their personal “souvenir”.
The people who bought the paper yesterday must either (a) not have been disgusted in the first place or (b) were disgusted but are quite happy to put aside their morals for souvenir (one of only several hundred thousand). Either way, it’s pretty tawdry.
Report abuse
NOTW “snapped up” ? Not quite; there were loads of this industrial waste of valuable paper resources rag around, and not being grabbed in abondonment by normal holiday makers, or locals. I wonder what is so historically interesting in the NOTW, not exactly up for a Nobel Prize is it?
Report abuse
Very insightful comment, Terry.
If News International were genuinely contrite they would have let the paper die quietly….but no – they increased the print run to squeeze their last pound of flesh out of the society that spawned them.
Incidentally, I note today that another News International paper (The Sunday Times) has been accused of similar acts. If proven guilty will we see the end of The Times I wonder? Or will it be that eventually we will discover they were all at it and the NotW was simply the one that got caught first. Then what will happen, I wonder?
Report abuse
Terry-
You don’t appear to have grasped why they bought it.
They didn’t buy it because they changed their mind, they bought it because it’s historic. It’s the LAST ever edition of a paper that’s been around for nearly 170 years.
Report abuse
SB is right
When the replacement Sun on Sunday emerges in a few weeks that first edition coupled with the last edition of the NOW should sell well on E Bay
Report abuse
Anyone who thinks that the last issue of NOTW will make money as a collectors item is delusional. 5 million copies of something does not a collectors item make.
News International had the last laugh that’s for sure, at all the muppets who don’t usually buy NOTW rushing out to get “a piece of history.”
Report abuse
Ray – apart from the fact that if anyone wanted to buy them they could easily have got their hands on them on the day of publication and not have to bother with ebay.
But my point is that an anti-fur protester would be a bit of a hypocrit if they bought the last fur off the production line just because it has some dubious historical significance. If you object to something, you object to it – you don’t suddenly think that having the same souvenir as several hundred thousand other people is more important.
If anyone who bought that paper on Sunday still thinks that it has any value in 12 months time then they will be deluding themselves.
Report abuse
Terry L
I was thinking more of the people in say Papua New Guinea
Report abuse
Ray, well yes, that is an angle that I admit that I had not considered!
But I suspect that the mysterious appeal of the NOTW is limited to the British market. The rest of the world couldn’t give a stuff about a particular UK tabloid (even if it has run for 170 years), although it seems that many are wondering how on earth the UK allowed its media to be so intrusive for so long, and why the British public lapped it up so readily.
If much more interest is whether this story has any fall-out for Murdoch in the US. I would love to see Fox News fall…
Report abuse
Terry Langlois
Please don’t wish for the demise of Fox News – it’s what I turn to when I’m in need of a giggle!
Report abuse