Piers Morgan, a former NoW editor, said on Twitter: “Shocked and saddened by closure of the News of the World. Scandals of past week indefensible, but has been a great British newspaper.”
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former communications director, said it was a “shocking move” and blamed bad management for what happened.
“At various stages they could and should have dealt with this,” he told the PM programme. “As a former journalist I don’t rejoice over the death of a newspaper but I do think that this is just the result of all the illegal activity but also the huge mismanagement of it ever since this started.”
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said on Twitter: “The one person who seems to have kept her job was Editor when Milly Dowler’s phone was hacked and is in charge of NI.”
He added: “It’s a big decision but it doesn’t solve the problem. A lot of people are losing their jobs but one person who isn’t losing their job is the chief executive of news international.”
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On his blog he wrote: “People have shown their revulsion at the hacking of the phones of Milly Dowler, the 7/7 victims and the families of fallen soldiers. But the one person who seems to be staying in her job is the woman who was editor at the time of the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone and who is now Chief Executive of News International.
“News International cannot deal with these allegations properly while she continues to be in place.”
Roy Greenslade, media commentator, said: “It’s a breathtaking development. I suppose many of the staff of the News of the World will be saying to themselves, ‘Did we have to go? Why hasn’t Rebekah Brooks gone?’
“Most of the staff now on the News of the World would not have been responsible for hacking. I feel very sorry for them. Some of them will definitely lose their jobs because of this and yet they will be innocent of the charge.”
John Whittingdale, the chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said the closure of the paper was not the end of the phone hacking affair.
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“We still need to get to the bottom of what went on. If necessary, prosecutions should follow. I think we still need to find out what happened,” he told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme.
Mark Lewis, Milly Dowler’s family’s solicitor, said the closure “won’t make any difference at all to anybody’s civil claims”. “Any crimes, any phone hacking, any other activities that were done weren’t done by the News of the World, they were done by people working for it,” he told Sky News.
“It’s sad that other people have been sacrificed, will lose their jobs, but the people who are responsible are still there. They’re going to be subject to criminal inquiries and, if appropriate, prosecutions, but the management of News International stays the same.
“There are questions asked about Rebekah Brooks. She was editor of the News of the World at the time the Milly Dowler situation was happening. She is still in her post. So she might be crying at other people losing their jobs, but perhaps she ought to lose her job and let them have theirs.”
Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son David was one of the 52 people killed in 2005, was among those warned by a senior detective that they featured on a list of potential hacking victims.
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He said the closure of the News of the World was a cynical commercial decision which will leave innocent people out of work, the father of a July 7 victim said. The decision to close the Sunday newspaper after 168 years was a “particularly nasty piece of work by a nasty man”, he added.
“When I first heard about the closure, my first thoughts were ’Oh, fantastic’,” Mr Foulkes said. “The only language (Rupert) Murdoch speaks is the dollar and this must have hit him hard. But as I’ve learned more about it, it looks more and more like a commercial decision he has made, a cynical decision.
“I’m told the website SunonSunday.co.uk was registered two days ago. He is a very hard business man who does not care how much harm or distress he causes. Some people may lose their jobs who don’t deserve it. And it seems he still insists on supporting Rebekah Brooks. It’s a particularly nasty piece of work by a nasty man.”
Rose Gentle, whose son Fusilier Gordon Gentle was killed in Iraq in 2004, had called for the News of the World to be closed down amid suspicions that her phones had been targeted. On hearing the news today, she said she was “glad” the paper will close.
She said: “The News of the World are the only journalists that we ever had bad dealings with. I’m glad that they’re gone, but it doesn’t mean we’re going to give up the fight to find out if our families’ phones were hacked.”
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Roger Alton, Executive Editor of The Times, also owned by the News of the World’s parent company, News International, told Sky News he is “extremely saddened” by the news.
He said: “The News of the World is a fine paper with an extraordinary great history of campaigning, of exposes, of holding the powerful to account for their actions. I’m proud to be part of an organisation that has the News of the World in it.
“I find it very, very sad that this great and fine paper has been shut down.”
Nick Robinson, BBC Political Editor, wrote: “My guess is that the Murdochs have sacrificed the News of the World in order to salvage their television ambitions”.
Lord Prescott, the former Deputy Prime Minister, was one of the alleged victims of phone hacking. He said that closing the paper would not resolve the problems at News International.
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“Cutting off the arm doesn’t mean to say you’ve solved it. There is still the body and the head and the same culture and that’s why there has be a public inquiry into it,” he said.
“I cannot accept for a moment that at the top of the company, Mr Murdoch - certainly Rebekah Brooks - didn’t know what was going on. Now some poor suckers on the News of the World are now going to be put on the dole simply because they’ve decided to make a cost-cutting exercise which they said they were going to do a week or so ago.”
Downing Street said: “What matters is that all wrongdoing is exposed and those responsible for these appalling acts are brought to justice.
“As the Prime Minister has made clear, he is committed to establishing rigorous public inquiries to make sure this never happens in our country again.”
Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said: “This shows the depths to which Rupert Murdoch and his lieutenants at News International are prepared to stoop.
“The announcement James Murdoch should be making today is the dismissal of Rebekah Brooks as chief executive of News International.
“The shocking revelations this week show beyond doubt the systemic abuse and corruption at the top of the operation ran by both Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson. Yet News International has persistently lied about the extent of this scandal and tried to pass it off as a problem created by a couple of rogue reporters. Closing the title and sacking over 200 staff in the UK and Ireland, and putting scores more freelances and casuals out of a job, is an act of utter cynical opportunism.
“Murdoch is clearly banking on this drawing a line under the scandal, removing an obstacle to the BSkyB deal, and letting his senior executives off the hook. That simply won’t wash. It is not ordinary working journalists who have destroyed this paper’s credibility - it is the actions of Murdoch’s most senior people.
“James Murdoch was absolutely right when he said in his statement today that ’Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad’. Yet those wrongdoers are still there today, at the top of the News International empire and ordinary staff at the paper are paying with their livelihoods.
“The closure of the News of the World - a newspaper that has been in print now for 168 years - is a calculated sacrifice by Rupert Murdoch to salvage his reputation and that of News International, in the hope that readers will switch allegiance to a new seven-day operation at The Sun, the Government will wave through the BSkyB deal and he will widen his grip on the UK’s media landscape.
“It is ironic that 25 years after the Wapping dispute it is the behaviour of Rupert Murdoch and his management that has caused the closure of the newspaper. The NUJ will offer all support to its members at the News of the World facing compulsory redundancies and will be organising an emergency meeting of all journalists at the title to offer advice and support.”
Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP, said: “It has got to be a good day for Britain. I think the News of the World as an organisation is toxic on almost every level. I think the country after Sunday will be a better place,” he told the PM programme.
“It is an organisation which has corrupted our political system, it has made it impossible for people to have faith in our police. I think it weakened parliament systematically over the years, particularly governments, it has damaged democracy and I think its very existence has de-civilised society.”
Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian newspaper, which has mounted a vigorous investigation of the phone hacking scandal, said: “James Murdoch’s statement describes the crisis at the News of the World as eloquently as anything that has been written in The Guardian.
“He admits - as we have been reporting for two years - that the paper has been ’sullied by behaviour that was wrong ... and inhuman’. He concedes - as we reported - that the paper has misled Parliament and that he was wrong personally to make the out-of-court settlements which The Guardian revealed in July 2009.
“Mr Murdoch blames ’wrongdoers’ who ’turned a good newsroom bad’. He does not say who these wrongdoers were - and that is the crucial question people will be asking, including those who are paying with their jobs and who are angry about the loss of a 168-year-old newspaper title.”
Max Clifford, the PR expert, said the paper was closed to protect the reputation of Rupert Murdoch’s wider media empire, which includes newspapers and TV stations around the world.
“I think the cancer, in News International terms, was too deep and had spread too far to be checked. So they let the patient die because it couldn’t be saved,” he said.
“They were obviously aware of not only the tremendous damage done to the News of the World but also News International by recent allegations. My belief is that there is a lot more to come - I think that is why the decision was taken to pull the plug.”
Mr Clifford himself brought a private case against the News of the World over the hacking of his phone and received a reported settlement of £1 million.
Having worked with the paper for 40 years, he said he had a “love-hate relationship” with it. “I just feel very sorry for (editor) Colin Myler and the staff of the News of the World who had absolutely nothing to do with any of these things. They are paying the price for their predecessors,” he said.
“But you can totally understand why they have done what they have done because they are hoping the pressure will now ease off News International.”
Mr Clifford said he would buy a copy of the final News of the World on Sunday and predicted it would be “the biggest edition for years, if not forever”.
Ivan Lewis, Shadow Culture Secretary, said current News of the World staff were paying the price for the mistakes of the past. “There are some really good guys who work at the News of the World right now. I feel very sorry for those people. They are paying the price for the past,” he said.
“They are paying the price for a company at the highest levels that was so arrogant, so failed in its responsibilities to take the allegations seriously and clean out the stables.
“The closure of the News of the World should not allow those people to remove themselves from facing up to the responsibilities they have for what has taken place on their watch.”
David Wooding, Political Editor of the News of the World, said that staff at the paper were completely stunned. “They’ve taken the ultimate sanction. They’ve removed it from the face of the earth,” he said.
Alastair Campbell, former Downing Street director of communications, suggested that the move was designed to show the company was taking action and was fit to take over BSkyB. “It will one day become a master-class course in bad crisis management,” he said.
Nick Boles MP said that the closure of the News of the World is to be welcomed, but that this is “not the end of the story”.
“This is an important mark that the company understands the depth of feeling in the country. I think that the criminal prosecutions will have to be allowed to run their course, and that may take a number of months. Then there will be the inquiry that the Prime Minister promised yesterday in Prime Minister’s Questions.”
Tom Watson, the Labour MP, told Sky News: “Let’s be clear about this, this paper has closed but the hacking saga has not. The issue for me today is not whether Rupert Murdoch closes a paper that was going to go bankrupt because there are no advertisers or readers left, it is whether Rebekah Brooks is going to consider her position and resign as chief executive of News International.
“The anger will only subside when a very senior executive in this company takes responsibility for this heinous attack on British people.”
Mr Watson added: “There are only two people in the country left who are supporting Rebekah Brooks today - Rupert Murdoch and David Cameron. I’m surprised she even bothered turning up to work this morning. No one was going to buy this paper any more. No one was going to advertise in it. They destroyed it. The people who were hacking phones, they were the people who closed this paper.
“I feel very sorry for honest journalists who are left at the paper and I actually have a degree of sympathy for the outgoing editor Colin Myler who, I think frankly has had to carry a heavy load for the wrongdoing of other people in the organisation.”
Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications at Westminster University, said: “Astonishing. I’m completely gobsmacked. Talk about a nuclear option. You’ve got to feel sorry for the people who work on it. There are people who are going to lose their jobs.”
“It could just be a fairly cynical ploy and there will be a new News International Sunday newspaper. It could well be that three months down the line the scandal’s calmed down a bit and they launch a new Sunday tabloid. It’s a lightning conductor.”