Accent on Youth

The British Labor Party and its mightiest press mouthpiece, London's Daily Mirror, have long drawn strength from a common source: young people. The Labor Party grew to power with help from Britain's discontented, we-can-change-the-world young folk. The Daily Mirror (circ. 4,571,000), serving up a spicy blend of triangular love, bloody crimes, and pictures of young ladies in the near buff came to command the world's largest newspaper audience of readers under 35 years: some 1,500,000. But in recent months, the Mirror has begun to wonder if, so far as its youthful readers are concerned, it might not have some hardening of the arteries. To Mirror Proprietor Cecil Harmsworth King and Editorial Director Hugh Cudlipp, the recent British elections were the chilling proof.

Boot-Faced Aunts. Among the most significant results of the elections was the fact that the Labor Party had lost much of its appeal to youth. Said London's Tory Daily Telegraph: "The younger generation regards the Socialists either as strangers or as a collection of austere, button-booted, boot-faced, half-fossilized aunts, embittered by grim repressions and memories of something nasty seen down in the coal mine." The Mirror, a shrill echo of Labor Party slogans, plainly shared in Labor's loss of appeal to youth.

After the sweeping Conservative election victory, the Daily Mirror stridently proclaimed its continuing prominence as the favorite newspaper of Britain's young people. "Sit back, folks," it cried last week on Page One. "Why is the Mirror read by more people than any other British paper? The answer is--it's gay. Buoyant. Moves with the times . . . The accent is on youth."

But even as these brave words were appearing in print, King and Cudlipp were taking stock--and making changes designed to revive the Mirror's appeal to youth. Out last week went the Page One slogan that the Mirror had used for 14 years: "Forward with the People." Out too went the Mirror's concession to middle-aged readers: a serious political column by Labor M.P. Richard Grossman, who, with help from the Mirror's Cudlipp, had also written the scathing but ineffective campaign broadside called "The Tory Swindle." And finally, out went a British newspaper institution: a comic-strip character named Jane, who won fame by appearing in the near altogether at any and every opportunity. Jane, by calendar count, should now be about 53 years old, and her lissome virtues have palled on Britain's youth. Installed in her place was a postgraduate nymphet named Patti.

"Bellyful of Politics." The Mirror also trotted out the life story of Tommy Steele, England's answer to Elvis Presley, and a series on the "oh-so-quickly Rising Generation." Almost entirely missing from the paper was any mention of politics. "When you've just had an election," said Cecil King, "the course is set for the next five years. Women readers particularly have had a bellyful of politics." More could be expected of the Mirror in its effort to recapture its youthful appeal. But the question that remained wide open was whether the Daily Mirror, in trying to get rid of its middle-age spread, had not exchanged it for a case of second childhood.

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