1903–1995 (later Lord Northcliffe), founder of the
Daily Mirror The Daily Mirror was launched on 2 November 1903 by
Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) as a newspaper for women, run by women. About the name, he said: "I intend it to be really a mirror of feminine life as well on its grave as on its lighter sides ... to be entertaining without being frivolous, and serious without being dull." It cost one
penny (equivalent to p in ). It was not an immediate success and in 1904 Harmsworth decided to turn it into a pictorial newspaper with a broader focus. Harmsworth appointed
Hamilton Fyfe as editor and all of the paper's female journalists were fired. The masthead was changed to
The Daily Illustrated Mirror, which ran from 26 January to 27 April 1904 (issues 72 to 150), when it reverted to
The Daily Mirror. The first issue of the relaunched paper did not have advertisements on the front page as previously, but instead news text and engraved pictures (of a traitor and an actress), with the promise of photographs inside. Two days later, the price was dropped to one
halfpenny and to the masthead was added: "A paper for men and women". This combination was more successful: by issue 92, the guaranteed circulation was 120,000 copies and by issue 269, it had grown to 200,000: by then the name had reverted and the front page was mainly photographs. Circulation grew to 466,000 making it the second-largest morning newspaper. Alfred Harmsworth sold the newspaper to his brother
Harold Harmsworth (from 1914 Lord Rothermere) in 1913. In 1917, the price was increased to one penny. Circulation continued to grow: in 1919, some issues sold more than a million copies a day, making it the largest daily picture paper. In 1924 the newspaper sponsored the
1924 Women's Olympiad held at
Stamford Bridge in London. Lord Rothermere was a friend of
Benito Mussolini and
Adolf Hitler, and directed the
Mirrors editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s. On Monday, 22 January 1934 the
Daily Mirror ran the headline "Give the Blackshirts a helping hand" urging readers to join Sir
Oswald Mosley's
British Union of Fascists, and giving the address to which to send membership applications. By the mid-1930s, the
Mirror was struggling – it and the
Mail were the main casualties of the early 1930s circulation war that saw the
Daily Herald and the
Daily Express establish circulations of more than two million, and Rothermere decided to sell his shares in it. In 1935 Rothermere sold the paper to
Harry Guy Bartholomew and
Hugh Cudlipp. With
Cecil King (Rothermere's nephew) in charge of the paper's finances and Guy Bartholomew as editor, during the late 1930s the
Mirror was transformed from a conservative, middle class newspaper into a
left-wing paper for the working class. Partly on the advice of the American advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, the
Mirror became the first British paper to adopt the appearance of the New York tabloids. The headlines became bigger, the stories shorter and the illustrations more abundant. By 1939, the publication was selling 1.4 million copies a day. In 1937,
Hugh McClelland introduced his wild Western comic strip
Beelzebub Jones in the
Daily Mirror. After taking over as cartoon chief at the
Mirror in 1945, he dropped
Beelzebub Jones and moved on to a variety of new strips. During the Second World War the
Mirror positioned itself as the paper of the ordinary soldier and civilian, and was critical of the political leadership and the established parties. At one stage, the paper was threatened with closure following the publication of a
Philip Zec cartoon (captioned by
William Connor), which was misinterpreted by
Winston Churchill and
Herbert Morrison. In the
1945 UK general election, the paper strongly supported the
Labour Party in its eventual landslide victory. In doing so, the paper supported
Herbert Morrison, who co-ordinated Labour's campaign, and recruited his former antagonist Philip Zec to reproduce, on the front page, a popular
VE Day cartoon on the morning of the election, suggesting that Labour were the only party who could maintain peace in post-war Britain. Building in
Holborn, London (former site of Daily Mirror Building) In 1955, the
Mirror and its stablemate the
Sunday Pictorial (later to become the
Sunday Mirror) began printing a northern edition in
Manchester. In 1957 it introduced the
Andy Capp cartoon, created by
Reg Smythe from Hartlepool, in the northern editions. The
Mirror mass working-class readership had made it the United Kingdom's best-selling daily
tabloid newspaper. In 1960, it acquired the
Daily Herald (the popular daily of the labour movement) when it bought
Odhams, in one of a series of takeovers which created the
International Publishing Corporation (IPC). The
Mirror management did not want the
Herald competing with the
Mirror for readers, and in 1964, relaunched it as a mid-market paper, now named
The Sun. When it failed to win readers,
The Sun was sold to
Rupert Murdoch – who immediately relaunched it as a more
populist and sensationalist tabloid and a direct competitor to the
Mirror. In an attempt to cater to a different kind of reader, the
Mirror launched the "Mirrorscope" pull-out section on 30 January 1968. The
Press Gazette commented: "The
Daily Mirror launched its revolutionary four-page supplement "Mirrorscope". The ambitious brief for the supplement, which ran on Wednesdays and Fridays, was to deal with international affairs, politics, industry, science, the arts and business". The
British Journalism Review said in 2002 that "Mirrorscope" was "a game attempt to provide serious analysis in the rough and tumble of the tabloids". It failed to attract significant numbers of new readers, and the pull-out section was abandoned, its final issue appearing on 27 August 1974. In 1978,
The Sun overtook the
Mirror in circulation, and in 1984 the
Mirror was sold to
Robert Maxwell. The first
Mirror using colour appeared on 1 August 1988 edition. Following Maxwell's death in 1991,
David Montgomery became Mirror Group's CEO, and a period of cost-cutting and production changes ensued. The
Mirror went through a protracted period of crisis before merging with the regional newspaper group Trinity to form
Trinity Mirror in 1999. Printing of the
Daily and
Sunday Mirror moved to Trinity Mirror's facilities in Watford and Oldham.
1995–2004 Under the editorship of
Piers Morgan (from October 1995 to May 2004) the paper saw a number of controversies. Morgan was widely criticised and forced to apologise for the headline "ACHTUNG! SURRENDER For you Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over" a day before
England met
Germany in a semi-final of the
Euro 96 football championships. In 2000, Morgan was the subject of an investigation after Suzy Jagger wrote a story in
The Daily Telegraph revealing that he had bought £20,000 worth of shares in the computer company
Viglen soon before the
Mirrors 'City Slickers' column tipped Viglen as a good buy. Morgan was found by the
Press Complaints Commission to have breached the Code of Conduct on financial journalism, but kept his job. The 'City Slickers' columnists,
Anil Bhoyrul and
James Hipwell, were both found to have committed further breaches of the Code, and were sacked before the inquiry. In 2004, further enquiry by the
Department of Trade and Industry cleared Morgan from any charges. On 7 December 2005 Bhoyrul and Hipwell were convicted of conspiracy to breach the Financial Services Act. During the trial it emerged that Morgan had bought £67,000 worth of Viglen shares, emptying his bank account and investing under his wife's name too. In 2002, the
Mirror attempted to move mid-market, claiming to eschew the more trivial stories of show-business and gossip. The paper changed its masthead logo from red to black (and occasionally blue), in an attempt to dissociate itself from the term "
red top", a term for a sensationalist mass-market tabloid. (On 6 April 2005, the red top came back.) Under then-editor
Piers Morgan, the newspaper's editorial stance opposed the
2003 invasion of Iraq, and ran many front pages critical of the war. It also gave financial support to the
15 February 2003 anti-war protest, paying for a large screen and providing thousands of placards. Morgan re-hired
John Pilger, who had been sacked during
Robert Maxwell's ownership of the Mirror titles. Despite such changes, Morgan was unable to halt the paper's decline in circulation, a decline shared by its direct
tabloid rivals
The Sun and the
Daily Star. Morgan was fired from the
Mirror on 14 May 2004 after authorising the newspaper's publication of photographs allegedly showing
Iraqi prisoners being abused by
British Army soldiers from the
Queen's Lancashire Regiment. Within days the photographs were shown to be fakes. Under the headline "SORRY.. WE WERE HOAXED", the
Mirror responded that it had fallen victim to a "calculated and malicious hoax" and apologised for the publication of the photographs.
2004–present The
Mirror front page on 4 November 2004, after the re-election of
George W. Bush as US president, read "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?". It provided a list of states and their alleged average IQ, showing the Bush states all below average intelligence (except for
Virginia), and all
John Kerry states at or above average intelligence. The source for this table was
The Economist, although it was a hoax.
Richard Wallace became editor in 2004. On 30 May 2012, Trinity Mirror announced the merger of the
Daily Mirror and
Sunday Mirror into a single seven-day-a-week title. Richard Wallace and Tina Weaver, the respective editors of the
Daily Mirror and
Sunday Mirror, were simultaneously dismissed and
Lloyd Embley, editor of
The People, appointed as editor of the combined title with immediate effect. In 2018, Reach plc acquired the Northern & Shell titles, including the Daily Express, which led to a number of editor moves across the stable. Lloyd Embley was then promoted to editor-in-chief across the entire group, and
Alison Phillips (previously deputy editor-in-chief for the Trinity Mirror titles) was appointed editor of the Daily Mirror. In August 2023 MGN Ltd and Reach plc launched a division of the
Daily Mirror for the
United States. It consists of a news website, titled
The Mirror US, with offices based in
New York City. ==Political allegiance==