Did 'Mirror' axe swing too soon?

On the afternoon of Friday May 14 last year the logic that led to the sacking of flamboyant Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan appeared inexorable.

A fortnight earlier he had published pictures allegedly showing soldiers of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment abusing Iraqi prisoners.

Amid a furious debate about authenticity, the armed forces minister Adam Ingram told the House of Commons that the images were "categorically" not taken in Iraq.

Trinity Mirror's chief executive Sly Bailey, already disturbed by public hostility to Morgan's stance, reached her conclusion. The Mirror had been duped. The man who became its youngest editor when appointed at the age of 30 in 1995 was dismissed.

Circulation was already in trouble. In March 2003 sales fell below two million for the first time in 70 years.

Bailey was recruited to stem the decline. Her record as chief executive of IPC Magazines suggested she was ideal, but sceptics accused her of obsessing about the bottom line to the exclusion of editorial content.

To Morgan's admirers, her response to the fake photos proved she was not a proper newspaper person. A dynamic editor, regarded as a hero by his team, was sacrificed for taking a bold anti-war stance that chimed perfectly with the Mirror's campaigning, left-of-centre tradition.

Even when it was plain that the pictures were fakes, Morgan's senior team remained loyal.

This month, with Daily Mirror circulation at a new low after shedding 200,000 sales in 12 months and alleged abuse by British soldiers in Iraq dominating headlines, has Morgan been vindicated?

One senior Mirror insider says: "What Piers did exposed a can of worms. He was always convinced that there was more to come. Sly hoofed him out just as public opinion about the war was beginning to change. Look at the paper now."

One of Morgan's senior former colleagues says: "Piers had the passion to set a news agenda. He made the staff feel they were all in it together. The Mirror just isn't like that anymore."

Others say that newsroom morale has collapsed since Morgan's departure and that his replacement editor, Richard Wallace, is hamstrung by interference from above. Sources say that Ellis Watson, recruited by Bailey to be general manager at the Mirror group, uses market research to determine which stories should run.

There is talk of the paper being edited by committee and crippled by cost-cutting. Journalists say budgets have been frozen since Morgan left. The Mirror has lost specialist reporters, closed its colour magazines and dropped high-profile columnists.

Professor Justin Lewis of Cardiff School of Journalism says: "Under Morgan the Mirror developed a clear purpose. Readers knew what sort of paper it had become. Now it is not clear what it is trying to be. You can't achieve that clarity by short-term attention to the share price. You have to be in it for the long haul."

Insiders fear Bailey is not.

Many Mirror journalists believe reports that Trinity Mirror plans to sell its national titles, the Daily and Sunday Mirror and the People, to focus on its more profitable regional stable.

Cash-rich private equity investors who considered the Daily Telegraph have the Trinity Mirror sums.

A Trinity spokesman is forthright: "We have absolutely no plans to sell the nationals."

The group is similarly dismissive of suggestions that Morgan has been vindicated. "We stand by the decision we took at the time. We never said the accusations of abuse were false. We said the pictures were fakes."

Since then circulation decline has slowed. For six months the Mirror's share of the newspaper market has been constant at about 19.5 per cent.

Morgan's successor might take some comfort from this. But it cannot disguise the fact that the Daily Mirror lost twice as many sales in the past 12 months as its arch-rival the Sun (200,000 against 100,000), or that its December 2004 audited circulation was down to 1,700,902, and is close to falling below 1.7 million.

- INDEPENDENT