  "Rather cheap and tacky, and generally a bit naff" Top Scottish leftfield publishers urlLink Canongate throw their weight behind 3AM 's struggle against the corporate hegemony of the Daily Mirror and their name-stealing gossip rag. Mirror Editor Piers Morgan was presenting his 'Tabloid Tales' programme on BBC1 last night, interviewing Simon Cowell. Morgan fancies himself as a pioneering Fleet Street-era editor and is on a mission to restore the Mirror back to its heyday -- viz. his lone tabloid stand against the war in Iraq and support for the Labour Party. He was recently urlLink designated Esquire magazine's top media man under 40.
Here's what will have landed on his secretary's desk this morning (copied into his bosses too, natch): Piers Morgan Editor, Daily Mirror One Canada Square London E14 5AP Dear Mr Morgan Re: 3am Magazine Following our letter of 3 March 2004, we note that we have received no response from Trinity Mirror plc regarding the launch of your new 3am Magazine, which you will have noticed bears a striking similarity to the title of our own magazine that has been published continuously since April 2000. We acknowledge that the 3am Girls has existed as a concept since July 2000 and while their existence has led to some confusion for those who deal with us, we have always been inclined to dismiss it. The publication of another 3am Magazine however, was always bound to have more direct consequences for us as a publisher. We feel that your failure to enter into dialogue with us or to even respond to our correspondence, issued for what most objective outsiders would agree to be understandable reasons, shows a breathtaking degree of arrogance and an unhealthy disdain for the small press by an organisation such as yourselves. It may be the case that you proceeded with publication of your 3am Magazine (which we now appreciate is part of a strategy to halt declining circulation figures), secure in the knowledge that as a publicly-listed company you had the full back-up to over-ride such inconvenient considerations as someone else of smaller commercial stature actually owning the name.
However, in the longer term, we believe that this decision will ultimately come back to haunt Trinity Mirror as you have merely given succour to your detractors as a publisher of a once reputable tabloid that could hold its head up on Fleet Street as a by-word for campaigning journalism and comment of considerable standards. We refer you to press coverage elsewhere of the launch of your 3am Magazine. This decision may have been taken for commercial opportunism in a hostile market for tabloid newspapers, but you also have to be held accountable for your ethical conduct as a journalist. As such, your victory on this occasion is merely pyrrhic rather than symbolic. Yours faithfully Andrew Stevens Editor, 3AM Magazine This will keep on running and running.
We were here first and Morgan has a lot to lose. Oh... I couldn't help but notice the following on the Mirror 's urlLink site recently: Want to expose the dodgy dealings of a firm and its bosses? Be it a billion pound giant or a small time shyster, our Sorted And The City team will want to know. Email sorted@mgn.co.uk (Please include a full postal address) According to urlLink Trinity Mirror Plc's financial data , their turnover last year was 1092m, which in UK terms makes it just over a billion. So I guess you'd call them a 'billion pound giant', acting like a 'small time shyster'. So who's going to report them to themselves? 
