Pages of Sin

For the 103-year-old weekly on London's Bouverie Street it was the 5,378th issue; for the new editor, it was the first. To appraise his work, his staffers grabbed the first damp copies that came up from the pressroom. Page One was reassuring (it had a lovers' lane murder yarn) and inside there were headlines like JURY TOLD OF HER LIFE WITH MAN CALLED A 'BEAST,' and CHASTITY PACT BROKEN, SAYS JUDGE.

The headlines dealt with sex, sports and prize contests (-L-1,000 a week to crossword puzzle fans), three enduring attractions that had built for the News of the World the biggest circulation (7,412,383) on earth.

The editor who took over for last week's issue, chubby, 49-year-old Robert L. Skelton, was in no hurry to tamper with the magic formula devised half a century ago by an insatiably curious young barrister-journalist named George Allardice Riddell. In the British police courts, Riddell found an inexhaustible treasure of news; he set his reporters to mining it. Unlike American scandal sheets, the News of the World has no "sob sister" interviews with murderers and mistresses; the paper never tries to tell a story before it is told in court, because of Britain's strict libel laws. But its deadpan, detailed coverage of trials--bigamy, rape, murder, adultery--gives Britons a hundred vicarious thrills a week.

Maids & Mistresses. "We're just like the Old Testament," Lord Riddell used to tell his critics. "We report crime and punishment." His kind of reporting paid off: News of the World now goes to seven of England's eleven million homes--usually by the back door. Lady Rothermere calls it the "kitchen paper of England." Indispensable to scullery-maids, it frequently finds its surreptitious way to their mistresses upstairs.

What, More Millions? News of the World has now set its cap for 12,000,000 readers, though it guesses--perhaps accurately--that it already reaches all the scandal-lovers in sight. To find 5,000,000 more subscribers, it intends to add more news of politics and world affairs, fields where its coverage is now good but short. Already it has dipped a bashful toe into Conservative politics. Shy, wealthy Philip Gordon Dunn, 41, its Canadian-born chairman and a major shareholder, would probably go Tory all the way if he were not afraid of offending his Socialist readers.

News of the World's new Editor Skelton, no scandalmonger, is a veteran of two years on Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail, and 14 years as top editor of London's conservative, dignified Daily Telegraph.

News of the World will probably let him indulge in all the serious news he wants, so long as he continues to give them headlines like:

MADE LOVE ON

WAY TO WIFE'S

FUNERAL,

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