There has been a lot of chatter about the NoTW phone hacking scandal and the role of journalists but at the end of the day journalists work in a business. If they don't get the story, they don't get the readers and this makes them edge towards taking greater risks, ever-increasing ones in these days of blogging and "citizen journalism".
Does this make what NoTW did right? No, of course not. However, it does raise once again a very important point which I am ever saying to friends who aren't in the industry - indeed to colleagues in the industry.
What interests the public is not the same as public interest. I do not think some footballer's sex life is in the public interest, unless his profile and commercial money-raising depends on his being portrayed as a family-guy. In the same way a politician that constantly bemoans single mums and feckless dads could spend his entire career shagging secretaries and prostitutes leaving a wake of illegitimate kids around is in the public interest.
It is this, of which all readers collaborate in, that has created a situation where NoTW shuts its doors today for the last time in 168 years.
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