When a 168-year-old British tabloid read by millions goes down in the flames, we have to say something.
News of the World published for the last time Sunday after backlash from the public and advertisers over a phone-hacking scandal. It was revealed that reporters pried into the voice mail accounts of celebrities and relatives of dead soldiers - all in the name of finding the next juicy, front-page scandal.
Not cool.
This is not a case of a poor publication going under despite its best attempts to stay afloat and fight the good fight. This is a case of garbage reporters using garbage tactics. There were serious ethical and legal lines that were crossed, and the paper got what it deserved.
And in case this fuels some people's fire over a perceived irrelevance of print media or even journalism in general, we don't think anybody should get carried away.
Good journalists don't behave this way. Good reporters have ethics and strive to develop the trust of both our audience and our sources. Given the amount of outrage this incident has sparked, we are confident that the majority of the public understands that these actions are not commonplace in the fourth estate.
This kind of activity is not indicative of the industry as a whole - even if it turned out that more of Rupert Murdoch's "news" organizations have dubious practices (which wouldn't surprise us), it should be known that there are many ethical journalists out there fighting to do the right thing the right way.
We want readers to know that we consider this a blemish on the face of journalism.
