There can be only one winner in the tabloid war

Since 11 September, The Sun and The Mirror have taken radically different paths, but will their editors hold their nerve?

Internal link

How we differ, by Morgan and Yelland

The world changed on 11 September in many ways. Somewhere in the lower echelons of those changes, it can be recorded that, at the age of 36, Piers Morgan discovered serious journalism. If it does turn out to be a genuine mid-life conversion for him, then it is good news for The Mirror and for newspapers. The Mirror's circulation has gone up; the return of John Pilger has provided thought-provoking copy; and there is mercifully less froth about the private lives of B-list celebrities.

Comparisons have been made with the paper in the days of its great editor Hugh Cudlipp. One needs to be careful here. Cudlipp's great days were before Larry Lamb's Sun changed tabloid journalism by making television – especially its soap stars, light-entertainment presenters and newsreaders – daily newspaper fodder. The world, in its prurient curiosity and its confusion of soap plots and real life, has also changed since Cudlipp's day. No tabloid editor can afford to ignore such things completely now. Besides, Morgan has a way to go before becoming the Cudlipp of his day. Cudlipp's Mirror, with its Mirrorscope features, was investigative and educational, enlightening readers each day.

And it had a clear and robust political stance. Morgan's Mirror remains an unpredictable and not always coherent hybrid that is mercurial in its attitude to Blair, veering from being slavishly pro-Labour, just a few months ago, to running unexplained references in front-page headlines to Labour's "lousy policies".

As the interviews below, with Morgan and The Sun's editor, David Yelland, show, part of Morgan's strategy is to give The Mirror a definable stance that distances it from The Sun. The shining light on Morgan's Road to Damascus has not just converted him to the glories of hard news; it has made him realise that he has to stop aping The Sun. Well, better late than never.

The Mirror and The Sun have long enjoyed attacking each other with humorous hyperbole. But in the case of Morgan and Yelland, it is a case of: "This time it's personal." Yelland feels, rightly, that Morgan's jokes in the paper about his appearance and his childhood illness, alopecia, have been needlessly unpleasant; equally understandably, Morgan has found it hard to forgive The Sun's repeated calls for his sacking over the City Slickers scandal.

Their mutual antipathy is diverting but of no interest to their readers and of no significance in the development of the two papers. What is important is how their respective reactions to 11 September will shape the future of tabloid journalism.

For all Morgan's public delight in his rebirth as a Cudlippite, Yelland's stance is arguably the braver. To misread the public mood and lose readers is not the wisest game-plan if you are a Murdoch editor. But Yelland clearly believes he is playing a long game, and is convinced that readers will soon tire of Mirror-style, war-related splashes and will once more want to know who Patsy Kensit is walking out with.

If the numbers prove him right, The Sun, which has always professed to be in the entertainment business, will, depressingly, continue to present show business under the guise of news, and Yelland's job will be safe. If the circulation continues to fall, Murdoch's patience will probably run out.

The latest figures had The Sun, with 3.5 million sales, showing a 0.9 per cent month-on-month loss and, more worrying, a 5.5 per cent year-on-year loss. The Mirror, with a 2.27 million daily sale, is down 1.5 per cent year on year but up 2.08 per cent month on month.

However, Piers Morgan's future could be just as fraught as Yelland's. If Morgan is true to his word, he must continue to reshape The Mirror, a much more complex task once the war is over. It will need a serious, investigative approach to the NHS, education and politics, to a degree that will make its still-substantial celebrity quotient look ludicrously out of place.

If circulation begins to fall and he reverts to pre-11 September Mirror coverage, then his current protestations of a journalistic rebirth will look to have been no more than a sharp piece of pragmatism.