"The News of the World is dead; long live the Sun on Sunday".

Such was the consensus following last week’s closure of News International’s (NI) Sunday tabloid. Cynicism is an easy reaction, but it only surfaced once the initial shock had dissipated – sacrificing the News of the World was a momentous decision for News Corporation that no one had predicted.

Despite the extraordinary scale of opprobrium the paper had garnered, NI’s press release was difficult to believe. Was Rupert Murdoch really bringing to an end a 168-year-old newspaper and the UK’s most successful Sunday title?

The furore over whether the move was made to save one person’s job is the focus of much of the world’s press, but how the closure will affect the print industry has not yet been fully examined.

Can the decision by print media’s staunchest supporter, Murdoch, to abandon the title in such short order be taken as a sign that even the newspaper moguls are turning their backs on print?

Staying mum
It’s not easy to find anyone connected with the affair who is willing to talk. NI has, characteristically, closed ranks, while contractors such as Johnston Press and Prinovis will only respond with "no comment". Even rival printing companies don’t wish to talk about it.

Of course most people don’t believe it is the end of an NI red-top Sunday tabloid, with the Sun on Sunday tipped for launch sooner rather than later. Indeed, speculation only heightened this week when 200 News of the World journalists were put on gardening leave rather than made redundant. Even if anyone at NI is to go, the firm must go into consultation first, which it hasn’t announced.

One industry expert, who did not wish to be named, suggested that the seven-day Sun had been talked about previously. "It’s a cosy way of doing it, of dropping a toxic brand," the source suggested.

The big question now is how long NI waits until it launches the new title, and what happens to existing contracts in the interim. One expert suggested that it could be as soon as this weekend. "Do people even know that the two papers are connected? Will News International give them the credit that they do?" he asks.

If the Sun on Sunday was launched this week, NI could continue operating almost as normal, but such a move would risk defeating the object of closing the News of the World, arguably even making the problem worse as the "toxic" brand’s contagion spreads to NI’s other titles.

Newspaper printer Johnston Press is contracted to print some 500,000 newspapers per night at its Dinnington and Portsmouth flagship plants. Without the News of the World work, will NI continue to pay out on the contract? If not, how will Johnston Press fill the big Saturday-night hole in its press schedule?

It is even conceivable that a possible decrease in numbers could mean NI would want to move the title away from Johnston Press and keep it in-house, although the five sites – Portsmouth, Broxbourne, Dinnington, Knowsley and Eurocentral – are so perfectly laid out across the country that the partnership would probably survive regardless of the run lengths.

Ongoing impact
Unite national officer Steve Sibbald said the organisation was discussing the situation with its members at Newsprinters, as well as contract printer Johnston Press, but that at this stage it could not say for certain whether jobs would be lost.

However, Sibbald believes that, without a successor to News of the World, the knock-on will hit more than just NI. "How will distributors be affected? The News of the World would have been their main distribution title. I can’t see the other titles taking up the slack.

"But even if it is only temporary, working hours will be hit. What are they going to do with their drivers?"

On its final day the newspaper bumped up its print run to 5m, almost double its usual figure, to handle the anticipated surge in readers. In the end it sold 3.8m copies. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some people who missed out on the title still bought a newspaper. The ABC figures for the weekend will make very interesting reading – perhaps the move could revitalise the Sunday newspaper market?

The other red-top tabloids, alongside the Mail on Sunday and Sunday Express, will realise that this Sunday there will be around 2.5m people wondering which newspaper to buy. If it starts a war for readers we could see numbers on the increase, and that battle will only be heightened if NI re-enters the Sunday tabloid fray.

Preventing contamination
The fall-out from the News of the World’s closure is likely to be felt for some time to come. News and speculation continues to filter through. One indication is that Murdoch may offload all his titles in a bid to rehabilitate the NI brand and prevent infection spreading to his broadcasting interests.

Given that nobody saw this move coming, anybody who tells you they know what his next move will be is bluffing, unless their name is Keith Rupert Murdoch. Last time he garnered this much attention was when he moved his titles to Wapping. One can only speculate that the outcome of this latest scandal will be similarly disruptive.

TIMELINE: NEWS OF THE WORLD
1843 News of the World established by John Brown Belle, the first issue goes on sale for 3p on 1 October. It is billed as the ‘Novelty of the Nation’
1891 The title is sold to the Carr family, with whom it would remain for almost 80 years
1928 Paper begins printing in Manchester on News Chronicle presses
1950 On 18 June 8,659,090 copies of the newspaper are printed at the Bouverie Street plant in Manchester. It is still to this day the highest print run of any English-language newspaper
1959 Believed to have introduced the ‘kiss and tell’ story when Diana Dors is paid £35,000 for her memoirs, unheard of at the time
1960 Printing moved to Thomson House. Officially the title was merged with northern newspaper Empire News, which ceased trading
1969 Becomes the first British title purchased by Rupert Murdoch, out from under the nose of fellow newspaper mogul Robert Maxwell
1981 News of the World launches a magazine insert, initially called Sunday
1984 Moved from broadsheet format to tabloid format
1985 Robert Maxwell purchases Thomson House, leading to the title moving out. After a short spell on Express presses in Great Ancoate Street it is moved to the Knowsley plant, among others, where it is still printed today, albeit on new presses
1986 Printing of the title, along with that of its News International sister titles, is controversially moved out of Fleet Street to Wapping, leading to protests and industrial action
2008 News International titles move to Broxbourne, considered to be the world’s "biggest printing plant". Broxbourne joins the refurbished Knowsley plant, its Eurocentral site in Scotland and two Johnston Press plants, Dinnington and Portsmouth, as the title’s final print plants
July 2011 James Murdoch tells employees that the following Sunday’s edition, 10 July, will be its last