Justine Roberts Co Founder of Mumsnet says, Mumsnet users will 'not lament the loss of the News of the World as a Newspaper'

[complimentary]

How dare Justine Roberts speak for me and others in saying in todays Times that I as a user of Mumsnet will be glad that this 168 year old paper has folded. Murdoch as an Aussie and Roberts being married into the Guardian may not care about this paper but I an many others do, particularly with the loss of of 200 jobs. I'm not surprised she says the above as she is married to the deputy editor of the Guardian, who led the campaign against this paper. There is one thing Ms. Roberts can be sure of, the Guardian won't replace the News of the World, with its daily readership of 175.000!

Awesomepan. I'm so sorry I called 'Justine' an 'old hag' I did not realise you would be so hurt...Do you know her personally? I'm sure Justine has very thin skin also...but being married to the deputy editor of the Guardian, I'm sure she's been called worse...a lot worse!

no, don't know her personally, and no I am not hurt.

I love NOTW, I will mourn it. Think of all the unethical nutcases now looking for work at the Guardian and it's ilk. And some of them can spell

Goodness that sounded rude. Did you mean it to sound so rude?

I have never read either Guardian or NOTW. Therefore, it is true to say that I would not lament the loss of either. Indeed, I think more generally that the days of the printed newspaper are severaly numbered.

mycounty - the convention on MN is that people do not make abusive personal comments or name calling.

Oh that is helpful.

Just as I was feeling faintly nostalgic about the NotW of yesteryear, some dim knobber uses 'old hag' reminding us all that in the land of the red top a woman is either a hottie or an old hag. That's all.

I thought that part of the reason the daily readership of the guardian was so low was because you can read it all online?

Anyone else think that?

unethical nutcases.

time to remind ourselves of tethersend's observation that red top front pages have bee ntelling us for decades that life on benefits is cushy, and prisons are like holiday camps.

So we all win then.

How many people posted on the thread refered to above? And how mant users or MN are there? I haven't even looked at the thread, and I'm sure many others haven't.
So I want to know what percentage of MNetters are on that thread to justify or claim that it is the view of the majority here. Surely it is the majority of MNetters who posted on that thread that was meant...

NOTW was a load of shite.

It will, in the next couple of weeks be called the Sunday Sun and have a lot of the old staff re-hired (if they are good at their job or have a lot of shit on NI).

Gilly - Justine has already explained up there ^ that it was a misquote, they missed an important word out.

I reckon Justine gets to say what she wants about her site and you can not use it if you don't like it.

mycountry no-one but Justine could be personally upset by you referring to her as 'the old hag' however, it is a deeply misogynist comment, not to mention simply uncivil and rude.

This attitude (to women) and tone is exactly why I (and many othe MNetters) do not read any tabloid newspapers and therefore will not miss any if they were to go. This does not mean that I believe that the NoTW should have paid the price for the illegal activity of some of it's journalists and those in command. I do lament the loss of jobs of the majority of workers at the NoTW and feel that this is a cynical and futile attempt to save James Murdoch and Rebekah Wade.

Mycounty, just because loads of people buy TNOTW or rather have bought it in the past, does not mean that they agree with the way their 'investigative' journalists have behaved. I cannot imagine many people condoning what has been done. Or that they disagree with the closure of the newspaper. They may disagree but who knows in what numbers?

Thus, the 'norm' as quoted by complimentary is not about the level of readership but rather the opinion of those readers which has not been quantified and therefore cannot be described as a 'norm'.

I fail to see how The Guardian readers or any readers of what are referred to as broadsheets are elitist.

I feel it is complimentary who is making sweeping statements.

Out of interest, MoreBeta, would you not lament the loss of the whole printed news industry then?

I don't know about MoreBeta, but I would miss the printed newspapers. I don't buy one regularly and never have, but sometimes the headlines would catch my interest while I was out and about and then I would.
I also liked the broadsheet cryptic crosswords (although haven't done them for a while) and can't see that it would translate well to an on-line option, especially as we used to do them in a group in our coffeebreak. Much easier to swap papers than muck around with technology, IMO. But I am a technodinosaur, so have my own ishoos with that.

Laugs - I think most news will be read online within the next decade. With the advent of Kindle and other internet capable mobile devices this is already becoming accepted as a normal way of readiing news. I barely read a newspaper now. Most of it I have read already before it is published in print.

We will still need news gathering organisations - it will just come to us in a different way and it will not necessarily be existing media organisations that successfuly transition to true online news.

Hmm, well I read almost everything online too. But I would still be devastated if I could no longer celebrate the weekend with gallons of coffee and a pile of Sunday papers. Guess I need to start buying them again then...

If Ms. Roberts had said not said that users of MN would not lament the loss of the TNOW. I would not have posted the message. Unfortunately she did not, she was a sports journalist, and one would think that she would have a great deal of sympathy for the loss of a paper that has been around for 168 years, buy no she appears triumph, that her husband and and others at the Guardian have in part been part of the demise of this newspaper. Most would agree that phone hacking is wrong, and most could not care less if it was an MP, but to hack Milly Dowlers phone and others was wrong, to pay the police is wrong, (I believe 900 are being investigated for taking bungs).

My gripe with Justine Roberts is that the demise of this newspaper is not something to crow about. Roberts and the other 175.000 who read the Guardian may not miss TNOW, but the 7.5 million who did read it, will.

I personally did not read TNOW much, apart from when Fergie was sucking John Bryan's toes some years ago, then I could not get a copy!

But I will miss a paper that the great George Orwell read, he wrote;
'You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose and open the News of the World...'

I really don't think Orwell would have been interested in reading the rag in its most recent form tbh. He had quite well documented views on institutionalised corruption you know.

"Ms Roberts" is not the reason the NOTW has closed. Rupert Murdoch is. He chose to close it rather than run the gauntlet of the investigation with it open. He is the cause of its decline and demise, not Justine Roberts, MN, nor the Guardian.