Diary – 16 July 2011

It’s 4 p.m. on a Thursday and I am talking with an MP on the House of Commons terrace. My mobile phone rings. It’s my colleague Keith Gladdis, the northern correspondent for the News of the World. I tell him I’ll call him back: I’m with a contact, working on a story — thousands of jobs have been lost because civil servants fixed a deal with a German company. There’s not much point, he tells me. ‘We’ve all been fired. They are closing the paper.’ I make my excuses and leave.

Papers normally fold after running out of money or readers. The News of the World had plenty of both: still profitable, still the largest Sunday sale on the planet. But we were sunk by appalling activities carried out in secret. In 12 years, I never laid eyes on Glenn Mulcaire, the ‘detective’ whose actions destroyed the paper. His very existence was known only to a handful of now-departed executives.