'Mirror' ditches red top for serious revamp

The Mirror, Britain's oldest "red-top" daily newspaper, is to cease to be a red top and cease to be The Mirror.

The paper is reverting to its original name, the Daily Mirror. But, more significantly, it is to lose its brash red masthead that – in the public mind – identifies it as being in competition with The Sun and the Daily Star, at the bottom end of the newspaper market.

The change is meant to be a visible sign of the editor Piers Morgan's new approach to journalism since 11 September. He has tried to make the paper more concerned with serious news. However, no paper is brave enough to ignore celebrity; and another change announced by Mr Morgan yesterday is a doubling in space for his celebrity hunters, the "3am Girls", who get two pages each day for gossip.

Mr Morgan said yesterday: "The truth is that the Mirror 'relaunch' started on 11 September but it's only now we've chosen to make it official. The red masthead, once a badge of tabloid honour, goes. It now epitomises something downmarket, sleazy and tacky – three adjectives that could never apply to our new paper.

"The changes are not about going upmarket. They are about becoming a serious paper with serious news and sport, serious gossip and serious entertainment."