Piers Morgan: 'I would make the Mirror free tomorrow'
1 December 2008
Every national newspaper will go free within 10 years and the Daily Mirror should be the first, according to its former editor, Piers Morgan.
In an interview published in the British Journalism Review, the national newspaper editor turned TV personality said Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey needed to make the Mirror free before The Sun did the same.
"I would make the Daily Mirror free tomorrow, because I don't see any future for it otherwise," Morgan said.
"If The Sun were to go free tomorrow it would kill the Mirror. It's a horrific position to be in and I'm sure that if Sly Bailey could find a buyer at the right price she'd sell the national titles like a shot."
According to the official ABC national newspaper circulation figures for October, the Mirror's circulation fell seven per cent year on year to 1.42m copies a day.
Free title Metro, which today unveiled its first major redesign since it launched in 1999, is within 60,000 copies of overtaking the Mirror's distribution.
In October, the Associated-owned morning free paper distributed 1.36m copies a day in all of the major British cities.
"I think within 10 years every Fleet Street paper will be free," Morgan told the British Journalism Review.
"Look, if you gave away a free cup of coffee to every commuter in every city in Britain, eventually nobody is going to buy a coffee because their perception of a cup of coffee is that it's worth nothing."
He added: "Free papers are being bombarded on to people in every city and they are getting better and better.
"The quality is improving week in, week out, and when they get as good as the paid-fors, it's the end of paid-for newspapers."
Morgan predicted that print newspapers would exist for another 30 years, but "probably not a lot longer than that".
"It's only the old guard that likes the feel of a print newspaper," he said. "Paper is just going to die out, just as books are going to die out in their present form."
He praised the journalists working on the Daily Mirror in the "ferociously competitive environment" of rolling TV news and the internet.
"The current editor of the Mirror, Richard Wallace, has an immeasurably harder job than Hugh Cudlipp's editors ever did," Morgan said.
"He's now producing a daily paper five times the size with a fifth of the staff.
"I salute the current journalists and editors because I know how difficult their job is compared with their predecessors."
Morgan, who edited the Mirror from 1995 to 2004, begins a new chat show on ITV1 in the new year.
PIERS MORGAN ON...
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... Kelvin MacKenzie
I thought: 'I'd love to be that guy', this sort of raging maniac who was running the Sun newsroom like a military operation. Kelvin would have been a great wartime senior officer - take no prisoners, kill everyone. I've always thought editing a tabloid paper was the nearest thing to commanding a unit - taking a bunch of very disparate, very passionate souls and going into daily battle.
... the Mirror's anti-war stance
There you had a situation where, historically, the Mirror will be shown to have been absolutely right about the Iraq war, both during and afterwards. We suffered terrible sales damage once the war started. Sales fell off a cliff. Do I regret it? Not at all. I'd do exactly the same tomorrow.
... the Iraq torture photos
We gave the pictures to the MoD at midday before publication and they never once raised questions of authenticity. Everyone tells me now that they knew immediately they were fakes. Well no one said a word then. As we sit here four years later, nobody has ever proven to me beyond any doubt that those pictures are faked.
... being sacked
I've never blamed Sly Bailey for what she did. Sly will tell you I've never had a cross word with her about it. I see her quite regularly and we always get on very cordially. I accept it wasn't personal. It was a business decision.
... the City Slickers affair
Of course I wish I'd never bought the shares. Having said that, I thought the ferocious and relentless drubbing I was given for years by Fleet Street was a bit over the top. It was a total coincidence that I wish had never happened. The one thing I'd never been was dishonest. I might have been a rogue when it came to my journalistic behaviour, but I was an honest rogue.
... the US media
I would say the media are more accurate there than they are in Britain, but they have nothing like the passion and flair and aggression and enthusiasm and creativity that British papers do.
