Staff at the News of the World last night directed their fury at Rebekah Brooks, who edited the newspaper during some of its most controversial years.

Mrs Brooks, who is now the chief executive of News International, the newspaper’s parent company, was confronted by a “lynch mob mentality” as she told News of the World staff that Sunday’s edition would be its last.
It was claimed that she was in tears as she broke the news but was immediately asked to leave the newsroom by the paper’s present editor Colin Myler, a highly regarded Fleet Street veteran, and had to be escorted out by security.
Staff were said to have cheered when told that Mrs Brooks had offered her resignation on Wednesday night, although it was turned down. A source said: “The joke ran through the room that we would accept the offer on the company’s behalf. We were all feeling fatalistic.
“Colin told us that the decision to close the paper had been made in New York, that as soon as the suits there saw that the shares had started to slide they thought they had to cut us off.
“Rebekah tried to justify her actions by saying that the actions of a few had led to this, but the irony that she was one of those few was lost on her. She said that she would take any questions that people had, but Myler, who was standing next to her said, 'No, Rebekah, I think it’s best if you leave the floor’. An entire newspaper has been sacrificed to save one person.”