IT'S ALL OVER

GREED ALL ABOUT IT AS LAST EDITION OF SCHNEWS OF THE WORLD GOES TO PRINT...

Yes the world of alternative jounalism was rocked to it’s core this week as SchNEWS International’s mogul boss Rupert Makepeace announced the sudden closure of the paper. Britain’s most well-loved anarcho-newsheet has been serving up it’s unpopular brand of poorly researched facts, corporate and political sleaze, eco-terror propaganda and non-gender specific titillation for 168 months, and commentators are still in shock that it will be no more.

Making the announcement Rupert didn’t say, “It’s a minor shame that I have to do this, but the hacking scandal [where rogue employees were found to have been hacking together articles stealing bits of  Indymedia articles] has engulfed and tainted the whole SOTW brand.

When big important activists start saying they’ll boycott the listings pages - and people are calling for the head of my flame-haired right-hand man, Jo Makepeace [under whose stewardship the whole scandal began] - well I’d rather just close the whole thing down... and open up a near identical SchUN on Sunday from next week, with fewer staff on worse contracts with reduced biscuit supplies.

Right, now can I get on with my takeover bid for Reel News?”

 

 

Joking aside – and who couldn’t resist a smile at the demise of one of our favourite hate-icons –  the abrupt closure of Murdoch’s, and Britain’s, best selling newspaper title? The story? Another shrewd, cynical power-play by one of the most arrogant of the super-elites in charge of the top table of UK plc.    

It’s not surprising that the News of the World is shutting its doors. It’s unlikely that NOTW would have ever recovered the dubious respectability it might have had before it’s editors and journos were caught red-handed robbing data from the victims of 7-7 terrorist attacks and serial killers. The whole newspaper sector is on the wane, crowded out by TV and the internet as people get their entertain-uality from other sources.  All paper circulations are in steady decline (except SchNEWS of course) and Murdoch will certainly be aware of all this and be thinking its not that bad a time for a rethink.

HACK TO THE FUTURE

So closing the NOTW is a bold move designed to detoxify News International, spare politicians’ blushes and save his management team’s jobs (at the expense of everyone else’s) while being a good way to restructure his empire. A clever attempt to draw a line under the whole sordid phone hacking affair. And it’s obvious he’s fully expecting the reward for his ‘sacrifice’ to be the go-ahead for his BskyB television takeover.

But will the rest of the ‘establishment’ and the mainstream press let him get away with it? Well, more than probably – after he knows where all the bodies are buried and who did the burying, and whom they were sleeping with at the time. Not to mention it may sweep under the carpet and into history (well, until the next time) the whole question of such dodgy press behaviour - police and politicians aiding and abetting all the way – and allow a whole generation of mainstream journo scum to heave a collective sigh of relief.

MIND-BENDING

But the tabloids still dominate the ‘papers-sphere’, with the Sun and NOTW selling near 3 million – the Daily Mail 2m, The Mirror 1.2m and all the broadsheets combined (including the Torygraph and Murdoch’s own Times) still selling less than the Mail.

 In short near 80% of the available mass newspaper publications spew a constant diet of right-wing propaganda and celebrity drivel on to the collective consciousness, driving the mainstream news agenda.  Paper sales may be sliding but there’s plenty of years’ brand life in the old dogs yet. So it’s hard to imagine a future where the Sun doesn’t launch a Sunday version after whatever Murdoch considers a respectable period of time has lapsed. The king is dead, long live the King!

 

WHAT YOU WON'T BE READING INSIDE...

* 6 page round-up of global indigenous struggles against  exploitation

* Solution to the ‘banking crisis’ is to impose even more capitalism and make the masses pay for all previous screw ups.

* How the Israeli humanitarian oppression of Palestine continues...

* Jordan Goes Tits Up! - as pro-democracy protest demands abdication of King

* SkyPlus - idiocy link discovered

* Anything at all negative about News International or Rebekah Brooks

* George Osbourne in Sick Nazi Orgy shock!