’We’re going to the pub’

We don't deserve to be here, says editor of News of the World, after sending its last edition to bed

'We're going to the pub'

We don't deserve to be here, says editor of News of the World, after sending its last edition to bed

"Thank you and goodbye", said the last edition of the News of the World that was published yesterday. The 168-year-old tabloid shut down following a phone-hacking scandal in Britain.

The editor of NoTW, Colin Myler, poses with staff outside the newspaper offices in London, as they leave the workplace for the
last time. The employees have been laid off and the paper has been shut. The centre pages of the last edition celebrating 168 years of the history of the paper

Editor Colin Myler led out the more than 200 staff from the newspaper building in Wapping, east London, late Saturday.

"This is not where we want to be and not where we deserve to be," Myler was quoted as saying.

Myler held up the 8,674th and final edition of the newspaper outside the office, and said, "As a final tribute to seven-and-a-half million readers, this is for you and for the staff, thank you."

"Now, in the best traditions of Fleet Street, we are going to the pub," he added.

The tabloid is accused of hacking into phones of crime victims, celebrities and politicians. Police have identified 4,000 possible targets.

In January 2007, royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were both jailed for plotting to intercept voicemail messages. The newspaper also offered an apology in a full-page editorial (see box: Lost Our Way).

The tabloid's owner Rupert Murdoch is scheduled to arrive in Britain to take charge of the phone-hacking crisis.

The newspaper doubled Sunday's print to five million, with money from the sales to be donated to four charities.

Ex-editor Andy Coulson also a former aide of PM David Cameron was arrested Friday over phone hacking allegations.

'Lost our way'
"Quite simply, we lost our way," Sunday's editorial in NoTW read. "As we are now only too painfully aware, for a period of a few years up to 2006 some who worked for us, or in our name, fell shamefully short of those standards."

"Phones were hacked, and for that this newspaper is truly sorry."

"There is no justification for the appalling wrongdoing...for the pain caused to victims, nor for the deep stain it has left on a great history."

"Yet when this outrage has been atoned, we hope history will eventually judge us on all," the editorial said.

Cryptic crossword?
Media reports speculate if the staff who put together the News of the World's last ever crossword included subtle hints for News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, the former editor who told them that the newspaper was to be shut down today?

The Independent's Whitehall Editor, Oliver Wright, has pointed out a few interesting elements in the quickie crossword on page 47.u00a0 Its clues include:

Across
Brook (6)
lamented (8)
Prestige (6)
Stink (6)
Catastrophe (8)

Down
Digital protection
Less bright
Chair
Pest
Cease
Criminal enterprise

He made PMs dance like puppets: Ex-tony blair aide
Larry Price, author of Where Power Lies, and once a special adviser at Downing Street, wrote yesterday on the Daily Mail, "As first the News of the World, and then the whole of News International, started to turn toxic, David Cameron and Ed Miliband frantically waved their hands through the air above their heads. 'Look, no strings,' they seemed to cry. But the truth is that Murdoch had politicians dancing like puppets for too long...Something is rotten at the heart of the relationship between politicians and the Press in the country. But it goes way beyond a couple of 'rogue' reporters or one 'rogue' newspaper."