News of the World visits University

Paul Nicholas, Deputy Managing Editor of the News of the World, paid a visit to the University of Glamorgan on Monday.

Nicholas, a former reporter in the South Wales area, gave the talk to journalism students of the university, about what working in one of the world’s biggest and most controversial newspapers really entails.

Between insights into what journalists can expect to be paid at most levels of the paper, and quirky musings about the paper’s Fleet Street days, Nicholas gave an informing and entertaining talk to students and staff.

The mood was not all jovial however, and one of the first things mentioned, one of the paper’s more controversial ‘campaigns’, the naming and shaming of sex offenders, gave the audience a stark reminder of the very clear stance the News of the World takes on such matters.

Nicholas talked about the inevitability of legal issues working for such a controversial publication, how this affects the ever-slim timeline between printing and the paper arriving at our local newsagents.

The paper has bucked the trend of the shrinking print industry by a healthily increasing circulation year on year where other sunday papers have fallen in readership, and a website which boasts up to 1.9 million users a week, with the help of such clips as the disgraced formula one boss Max Mosley’s meeting with prostitutes. The paper is the biggest Sunday in the world, and in the top three biggest papers globally. Trends which only seem to continue as the News of the World, along with other titles belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s News International, will move to the world’s largest printing plant in Broxbourne, just off the M25.

The new £187 million plant is capable of printing 86,000 papers an hour, compared the 30,000 of their old presses in Wapping.

Media Guardian’s take on the new printing plant

Faster printing presses means the paper can wait on later news and sports results and still be able to get enough papers printed to meet demand, ensuring the News of the World remains one of the leaders in exclusive and controversial stories every week.