Not The News Of The World is launched
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Not The News Of The World is launched as a platform for independent journalists and bloggers to publish popular news stories.
The News of the World was the most popular English news paper in the world. It was founded in 1843, and the last issue was published, 168 years later on Sunday, 10th July, 2011.
It's closure occurred as a huge scandal of illegal voice mail interception and police bribery broke. The original staff accused of such illegalities had moved on by the time the scandal broke, having been removed after the methods were first exposed some years previously. However further revelations provoked a huge public backlash against the paper and it's publisher decided to close it down. Hundreds of innocent journalists, not involved in the scandal lost their jobs, and millions of loyal readers lost the most popular Sunday newspaper in Britain.
During it's time, The News of the World pioneered investigative journalism and exposed corruption and scandal, it's just a shame that the practices of former employees brought the whole paper down.
"Not the News of the World" was conceived to provide a platform for these newly independent journalists, with revenue sharing compensation. You can close the newspaper but you can never silence investigative journalism.
The web site was built in about 2 weeks, and is still being worked on to add a rich set of tools and services to help great journalists create great content. Initially we will be inviting journalists and bloggers to contribute, but we want to provide a means for photographers to contribute images via this web site and share in the relevant advertising revenue as well. If you are interested in contributing, please visit the 'Press Room' on the top right of the web site.
Whilst we don't want to recreate the obsession with titillation and voyeurism which became the focus of The News of the World, we do intend to respond to what is popular with our readers. We intend to share advertising revenue with contributors, so that the authors of the most popular content receive the most revenue and are encouraged to produce more popular content.
This is a new venture, so at the moment it's somewhat akin to myself drawing a chalk train on the ground and standing in it and making chuff chuff sounds. Whether it is a success depends on the quality of journalists and other contributors we can attract. If successful, this success will be shared equally by the contributors and the operator.
If you are a budding blogger or an experienced journalist, help us make an impact by joining us by connecting with Twitter in the 'Press Room'.
