In spite of the UK public outrage and ostensible credibility damage (not to mention at least short-term interrupting of advertising revenue) coming as a fallout of the News of the World "hacking scandal", I never really thought that there would be serious fallout to the paper itself. It's hardly has some paragon of journalistic integrity to hold up, after all.
But the news out now is certainly pointing otherwise. It has been announced that News of the World will be shutting down after its Sunday edition, ending a 165-year continuous publishing schedule.
Since its founding in 1846, News of the World has been the poster child of British tabloid newspapers. Going on early for a constituency of the "newly literate working class", it started with stories about brothels, women of loose morals on the loose, and grisly police reports.
A number of owners later, across many allegations and settlements on libel and invasion of privacy, including a 2007 scandal of tapping of phones of celebrities and extended members of the royal familiy, NOTW has finally encountered a crisis even its storied carcass can't survive.
Folliowing the the exposure that NOTW investigators hacked into the phone mail of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, very likely imperiling the investigation of what was then a very active murder investigation, major advertisers (including Virgin Airways, Vauxhall and Ford Motors and others) pulled their advertising and cancelled contracts for the forseeable future. The UK public was outraged and had organized what must have proven to be an effective boycott of the paper in the last 48 hours.
What I suspect more than anything though, is that a very brief internal investigation at the paper revealed that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that more proof of other (worse? hard to imagine) criminally prosecutable offenses was about to come about.
Rupert Murdoch may have publically expressed outrage and dismay over the evidence of the Dowler case, but it's awfully hard to believe him. As we can see going back to 2007 (when one of its investigators were incarcerated for the hacking), this has been standard operating procedure at NOTW. Murdoch doesn't abandon properties (especially ones which have for better or worse themselves achieved a new titillation and outrage factor such as NOTW has now) lightly.
With absolutely nothing more than that hunch to back it up, I think that this is being done to provide a modicum of cover for editor Rebekah Brooks and others in senior editorial positions at the paper from the liability they were bound to face (still may) from the revelations.
Word is that the final paper on Sunday will carry no advertisements and that all proceeds from its sale would be donated to "worthy causes" in the U.K.