Mirror Drops Red Top For New Look

The Mirror has dropped its red masthead and has reverted back to its original title, the Daily Mirror, as part of a revamp to position itself as a “serious” newspaper.

The new look paper, which debuts today, features a new masthead with white letters underlined in red, while a picture takes up the whole of the front page. A TV advertising campaign featuring the strapline “The Mirror – Think Again” has also been launched to promote the redesign.

Writing in today’s edition, the paper’s editor, Piers Morgan, comments: “The changes in our paper are not about going upmarket. They are about becoming a serious paper with serious news, serious sport, serious gossip and serious entertainment.”

According to Morgan, the red masthead has become associated with “downmarket, sleazy and tacky journalism”, something which the Mirror claims it has “nothing in common with”.

As part of the redesign the paper has brought back journalist John Pilger and has signed up Evening Standard columnist Matthew Norman and Vanity Fair‘s Christopher Hitchens. The 3am girls’ celebrity gossip column will also be expanded and new celebrity news magazine called M-Celeb will be published with the Sunday Mirror, which will be revamped to match the daily paper.

ABC figures for March 2002 place the Mirror‘s circulation at 2,116,281, down 1.1% on February 2002 and 3.3% on March 2001.

Trinity Mirror: 020 7293 3000 www.trinity.plc.uk

Recent Press Stories from NewsLine: Future Increases Gaming Magazine Frequency £3m Ad Campaign For Woman and Woman’s Own Good Housekeeping Adds To Staff In 80th Year

Subscribers can access ten years of media news and analysis in the Archive