If it cannot raise the sort of cash it wants, it will keep the paper.One old newspaper hand observes that the problem has existed for the 40 years the People has been part of the Mirror group. “When Cecil King [then chairman of Daily Mirror Newspapers] bought the Odhams Press, they hardly realised they had got it,” he says “He bought it for the magazines, not for the People. But that’s how there came to be two mass-circulation papers in one stable. It’s never been resolved.”Ironically, one Trinity Mirror insider notes the People probably feels as secure today as it has for years. Twelve staff have gone and other changes are being made to create a saving of £1m a year, but management has promised that will be ploughed back into promotions “There is this commitment to the future,” the source says. But for the People and Sunday Mirror to be in the same company is a strange situation.While having the two tabloids as rivals is unhelpful, closure makes little sense as the People shares costs and overheads with its national stablemates.

Neither is it certain that the Sunday Mirror would win the People’s readers if it did close. The Sunday Mirror is not heading in the same upmarket direction carved out recently by The Mirror under Piers Morgan. But Tina Weaver, who was appointed Sunday Mirror editor when Colin Myler was forced out after an article in the paper halted the Leeds United footballers’ trial, has certainly made it a sharper, newsier read. Richard Stott, a former editor of both the People and The Mirror and now a Sunday Mirror columnist, says: “It has got much more steel to it than it had before.”And what of The Mirror itself? Piers Morgan, its editor, has won approving headlines of late, but that is only to be expected when a tabloid editor declares the end of the cult of celebrity and says serious news is the way ahead.

With the passion of the born-again hard news man, Mr Morgan told a conference in the autumn: “I hear Mirror secretaries talking about anthrax, not EastEnders; Bin Laden, not Robbie Williams. There is a sudden and prolonged hunger for serious news.”Although the events of 11 September confirmed this line of thinking, it was in fact a strategy already emerging from the work being carried out by Mr Sinyor and the team from management consultants McKinsey, which has been studying every aspect of the Trinity Mirror business. But will The Mirror’s move upmarket work? Piers Morgan appears to mean business and, though The Sun still sells one million more, he has been encouraged by recent circulation figures. Among the ideas touted for future development is dropping the traditional red masthead in a signal that the title is distancing itself from the downmarket “red-top” tag – and, more significantly, from The Sun.But the City is sceptical.