Even in its dying moments, as the lights flickered out, the News of the World wasn't about to give up without a fight. It was going to be pulling down someone's knickers right to the end.
There on its website, right under the sombre and self-serving note about the paper's closure from owner James Murdoch, was an interview with the "£1,000 an hour, coke-peddling, trilingual, bisexual" who is allegedly dating Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora. The headline? "They Give Love a Bad Name."
All right, so it's not the best effort by the world's best-selling scandal sheet (and, at 2.6 million copies a week, the best-selling paper in the Western world). It's not up there with "Harry's Drugs Shame," "Andrew and the Sex Slave Beast" and "F1 Boss's Sick Nazi Orgy with 5 Hookers." It does not hold a candle to "Gum and Get It," the heartwarming story of an 81-year-old prostitute, described in a dogged bit of investigative journalism as the world's oldest call girl. Like that other great NoW headline, "Virgin Mary to Appear in Dublin at 5:40 p.m.," the story of Mr. Sambora's inamorata may have been conjured from thin air. It wouldn't be the first time.
Some former colleagues, who had watched in pain as the newspaper lost its way, expressed regret at its passing: "Shocked and saddened by closure of the News of the World," tweeted former editor Piers Morgan. "Scandals of past week indefensible, but has been a great British newspaper." This is the same Piers Morgan who wrote in his diary, when he was editing the paper: "What a vile business politics is, almost as vile as journalism."
And where had the News of the World lost its way? It's easy to spot, and is, perhaps, even an object lesson for other newspapers: It had turned on its core audience, the ordinary reader. No one really cared if the newspaper used nefarious means to find out where a starlet got her intimate peace-sign waxing, or which footballer liked a bit of caning now and then, but when it turned on ordinary people - even worse, ordinary, grieving people - the public turned on it. The newspaper had illegally eavesdropped on the phones of murder and terrorism victims, and soldiers who died in combat, and their families. That was unforgivable.
All newspapers rest on the goodwill of the people who buy the laundry detergent and the package holidays advertised within, and who share their stories with astonishing generosity. The phone-hacking scandal betrayed those people, and the closure of the newspaper betrayed 200 more people who will now be out of work. Who will survive this dungstorm? The people at the top - British politicians and senior officers at the Metropolitan Police (bribes were paid to some officers on the force), and executives at Rupert Murdoch's parent company, News Corporation. And the most tenacious survivor, like a flame-haired Nosferatu, is Rebekah Brooks, who was editor of News of the World when much of the hacking took place.
The News of the World's funeral will be held tomorrow, when its last edition hits newsagents across Britain. Expected among the mourners are the taxi-drivers, hairdressers and café owners who made up its core audience. Not expected to attend are university professors, anyone who eats buffalo mozzarella or reads the Guardian, and Prime Minister David Cameron, whose former spokesman Andy Coulson was arrested yesterday in connection with the scandal. The presence of London's Metropolitan Police, which was once found in bed with the newspaper but recently had a drastic change of heart and ended the affair, is also in doubt.
"You can crush a man with journalism," said William Randolph Hearst, who knew a little something about sending out reporters to wheedle, lie and bribe their way to good stories. For once he was understating things: You can crush a lot of men, and women and children, too.