Time to Read – 3 minutes
Yesterday, The News of the World published for the final time – 165 years of history and the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world – toppled from number one, to nowhere.
What a disappearing act indeed – the paper that has murdered so many reputations being forced to commit suicide because of its own.
Oh, the speed of downfalls due to reputation – Arthur Andersen, Enron, Ratners etc. – no wonder that company reputation continues to be in the top three issues that keep CEO’s awake at night (the other two being lack of money, and the talent agenda).
What can you do if your brand suffers such a downfall?
It has to be big, it has to be sincere and it has to remove the causes.
Let’s measure those three against the actions taken by News International:
Big? YES – and the closure was entirely unexpected by experts in the industry.
Sincere? NO – the phone hacking story has been around for months, if not years. And watch out for The Sun on Sunday, coming soon (the domain thesunonsunday.com was registered on Tuesday 5th July on behalf of News Corporation).
Cause? NO, Rebekah Brooks (Ex Editor News of the World and CEO of News International) has to resign. If you are reading this, Rebekah, please resign now. You will be going soon, anyway, so go now and show you have an ounce of decency as an accountable leader to the present day journalists who had nothing to do with the scandal.
And yet, despite all that has been said, and read, Sundays without The News of the World will never be quite the same.
With my love and best wishes
David
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