The Sun on Sunday has stopped publishing Guido Fawkes’ column, bringing to an end its three-year partnership with Paul Staines’ blog.
A post on Monday night on the Guido Fawkes blog announced the end of the deal, saying the site was focusing on “expanding in terms of both output and staff numbers”.
It added: “We enjoyed the challenge of writing a very different product for a mass-market tabloid audience, though we won’t miss the deadline stress of sweating over our column all day Friday. The discipline of having to write tight, straight-to-the-point copy is tough.”
A Sun source said the end of the deal was amicable, with the contract, signed in 2013 and renewed yearly, coming to an end.
The Sun is thought to have offered an improved deal last year to extend the contract through the election year. However, both the Sun and Staines are understood to have decided the column was no longer an efficient use of resources going into 2016.
Fawkes’s final column on 24 January took aim at Ukip leader Nigel Farage, junior doctors, home secretary Theresa May and Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop.
Ties between the two news outlets are unlikely to be diminished, however, as the Sun hired Staines’s number two, Harry Cole, as its Westminster correspondent last June.
The Fawkes blog has cultivated an anti-establishment image but its staff have not shied away from working with mainstream outlets. As well as the long-running relationship with the Sun, Fawkes reporter Alex Wickham carried out the online sting leading to Mirror stories that forced Conservative MP Brooks Newmark’s resignation.
The site is is planning to bring in a fourth reporter and replace retiring sketch writer Simon Carr.
