The Daily Mirror - Classic or Dud?

i cant help feel that the 'left' could do with a lo-com-denom self-aggrandizing paper to counter similar on the right. so, the mirror is not for me personally, but i welcome its presence

Piers Morgan does not convince at all as a left wing editor, but his adoption of John Pilger has been - well almost sweet. They have also easily had the best covers of all the tabs for the last few years - employing the massive over the top photo-manips of the Sun with sloganeering which is hideously simplistic but nevertheless cheery to see on the morning news-stands.

possibly only redeemed by the general knowledge crosswords

IS Harry Harris still doing sport there? He's a knob.

I always though that, when the independent still was and still had some readers and some journalists, that it should have gone Tabloid and been the UK equivalent of La Republica or El Pais. Maybe that's where the Mirror is heading but I doubt it.

The covers recently have been brilliant but its hardly a great crusading socialist paper, but then then Morning Star no Gwynneth and no readers.

The covers have been great though not as uniformly great as some are making out - sometimes they're a bit too wordy.

also i like the idea of pilger or pinter gritting their teeth every time they read it

pinefox is a geezer

PF: you like ugly, patronising, illiterate hackettes whose clothes, regardless of expensive origin, look like they're from New Look sale rail? 3am have about four other people actually working on the desk and seem to spend all day reading/copying Popbitch.

I'll admit not all of the covers work, but again the clumsy ones are as energising as the good ones, you want to disagree, you want to enter into a debate.

How long til they have a Ms Dynamite column?

I'm also with Tom - who is it aimed at? What sort of person does Piers Morgan think is going to buy the thing?

On the other hand, I wonder how much of the massive turnout at Saturday's demo was down to the Mirror's anti-war stance.

I'd say classic, definitely. Even if the ABC figures show barely any difference since the revamp. Best horse racing tips in the British press, as well.

I thought the other tabloids missed a beat with the demo* - the biggest demo ever in Britain is massive news whether for or against - big coverage by The Sun/NoW (focussing on the Hyde Park speakers or on the militant elements, say) could have galvanised the pro-war opinion among their readers. Instead grumpiness towards the Mirror (I assume) meant the #1 national story got 3 pages in the News of the World.

*(I am not unhappy that they did, obv.)

well, good: democracy is about everyone being involved, not just ppl who wear sandals or can quote bucky fuller

broadsheet political coverage basically says: "yes you can join in provided you totally strictly obey our rules of etiquette"

cf all the letters complaining abt glen newey in the lrb, and how his style of writing is "trashy" and "tabloidy" — ie (they say) he belches at the vicar's tea-party and must be shut up

the mirror is a loud mess currently: that's what i like

morgan is a total fraud and hypocrite: probbly that makes him a good editor?

no!

some of the left must do this, and some of the left must do what the mirror does. as i said abouve, the lefts failing is in only working on limited ways, on limited levels. we need this kind of stuff as well.

mark s is correct in saying that the broadsheets etc have this "you are only with us if you observe xyz protocols", which is exclusionary and self-defeating, or at least it is if that is the only method

Isn't that a good thing?

(I don't read any papers bar an article or two in the sunday time: Bryan appleyard on the current Iraq crisis yesterday was 'funny').

Personally, I couldn't give a crap whether he's a tosser (sure he is in many respects, as I've been reading his stuff since he started on the Sun with the Bizarre column) and I'm pretty sure he's not one of nature's socialists.

All told though, as a result of his editorship, there's a mass-market tabloid that isn't right wing. That's got to be a massively good thing in my book. I like the fact that 1-2M people raed Pilger's stuff a few weeks back. I like the fact that they have a columnist in Brian Reade who is left-wing and populist and occupies the same niche as Littledick in the Sun but doesn't conclude that deportation and sterilisation are the answers.

Maybe Morgan will be seen by history as an editor in the Cudlipp tradition. Maybe he'll be seen as an egotistic charlatan. As I say, I don't give a monkeys, as long as British political culture has an alternative view to counter the Sun and Mail etc. All power to his, and their elbow. And he got rid of Harry Harris.

I will become a 3am girl on the day when you, Pete Baran, are found in flagrante delicto with Rebekah Wade.

Getting rid of Harry Harris = godlike genius.

except pinter ew ew and possibly glen newey whose looks i know nothing of

I got very worried when he did a pregnant pause right after.

Buying a copy of Socialist Worker after all is not a million miles away from a recruitment point of view to taking a personality test on Tottenham Court Road.

Ah, me and Rebbkah - throwing shapes.

I don't know what it really means either.

Baran is on form.

Q: for once I disagree with you. Anyway, the Boss is a left populist!!

Stop making me think the unthinkable.

Which part of East Side West Side South Side Backside is Pete making?

Anyway, this is the kind of photo exclusive the Daily Mirror is crying out for. BTW - when did it revert back to the name Daily Mirror from The Mirror which is toyed with for a couple of years. Does the BlackTop make a statement? What is the politicalposition of the Sunday Mirror (and by extension the Sunday People).

I also think distilling any kind of complex opinion into 400 piece with an amusing headline takes far more skill than allowing for a certain level of reader knowledge and having 1000+ words to explain yourself.

Re: The Three AM girls. Look, even if you hate them, you have to give whoever came up the idea some credit. Dominic Mohan may have started the Nigel-Demptser-with-the-cast-of Eastenders style, but Three AM took it to another level. Of course three attractive young women are going to gain more attention than fat bloke with bad haircut. They've created star columnists from people without any previous track record.

(The day I even express a desire to be a three AM bird is the day I start stubbing fags out on my eyeballs for fun.)

I also think that them gossip girls should form a band with Louise Nurding. They could then call it.....

you DO YOUR OWN WORK

I have heard worse about the remaining B!tches and about another red-haired ex-Emap employee who has a 'column' in a red top. But thank you Suzy.

Still it would be good if 3AM was replaced by 3tAM - with your hosts the Tammy Girls.

Good point re Mohan. You do know he lives very near you Anna. Often seen in Barbella's for Sunday brunch.

Damn, you've rumbled the reason I like Barbarella for Sunday brunch, that is, to look nice with a hangover.

How high profile are the 3AM girls anyway? They are a bit faceless, cf when they kicked one of them out last year.

I've not read the Mirror in years, but I can only see it as a good thing when one of the biggest papers lurches significantly to the left. The Guardian's style suits me pretty well, and there's a place for that, but there's surely a very vital place for a more populist, loud, genuinely lefty paper.

What Gareth says is very true. It is why Labour lost the 1959 election so badly: desperately crying to the working classes that they must be Ewan MacColl when, in reality, it was Lonnie Donegan who'd excited them and created the urge to become the Beatles, to make the 1960s possible, to break out of the Mass and the Collective of the Attlee years, except that the "natural party of the working classes" hadn't understood that yet. The Mirror was showing the way at the time, puritan socialism was conquered with Wilson's coup d'etat of 1963, and within five years they were back in power. It could well be that the Mirror is showing the way again. Certainly it will surely have had some sort of influence if, five years from now, we have a more "Labour" Labour government than the Blair administration is, even if it has a smaller majority.

what's a 3 am girl?

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