News Corp. says new tabloid to launch next week

LONDON - The successor to Rupert Murdoch's scandal-tarnished News of the World newspaper will start publication in a week's time, a senior News Corp. executive said Sunday.

In an email to staff, News International CEO Tom Mockridge said that Murdoch himself would be staying in the British capital to oversee the launch of The Sun on Sunday.

Mockridge said he was sure that "every one of us will seize the opportunity to pull together and deliver a great new dawn" for the newspaper.

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The Sun on Sunday will replace the top-selling News of The World, which was closed in July after revelations that members of its staff had routinely hacked into phones and paid bribes to score exclusives. The ensuing scandal stunned Britain's establishment, led to dozens of arrests and resignations, and has spawned a wide-ranging official inquiry into U.K. media ethics.

It also prompted a damaging advertiser boycott which left Murdoch with little choice but to close the tabloid, whose reputation had been left in tatters.

There has long been speculation that the Australian media tycoon intended to replace the market-leading paper with another one once the scandal blew over.

On Friday Murdoch announced plans to launch The Sun on Sunday "very soon," telling staff he intended to build on the "proud heritage" of his company's biggest-selling newspaper, The Sun.

Mockridge said News International, a subsidiary of Murdoch's New York-based News Corp., was working to put the scandal behind it.

"News Corporation has made clear its determination to sort out what has gone wrong in the past," he said in the email. "We are fundamentally changing how we operate as a business."