The Isle of Dogs is sleeping a little easier. They naively imagine that, with the closure this week of the down-market leftish tabloid (ital) Today (end ital), the newspaper war is over.
(Incidentally, the watchdogs of democracy in Britain were formerly known by the collective noun “”Fleet Street”, but now many have moved both editorial and presses to the eastern docklands, in and near the Isle of Dogs, that is perhaps a better collective noun to describe them, though they have not put it into print themselves.)
The war began about a year ago when Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Times began to cut cover prices. And it has resulted in the man who started it closing one of his own newspapers, Today, which he bought from founder Eddy Shah in 1987. But save the tears. (Ital) Today (end ital) was no loss, either to Murdoch, or indeed to journalism. It was a tabloid with nominally centre-left views, articulated in the crass way of British tabloids. It had collected about $280 million in losses.
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