The Mirror, nee the Daily Mirror - once the all-conquering champion of English working class bloke - looks set to have a radical make-over that may see it ditch its famous "red top" logo.
In its place could be the sort of black and white masthead favoured by more upmarket newspapers.
Details will be discussed at a meeting of shareholders today.
If plans go ahead, the contemporary tabloid formula of sex, greed, political spite, celebrity shenanigans and TV soap tie-ins will be replaced with hard news, analysis and lifestyle advice for the upwardly mobile.
The moment is historic because the Mirror was the inventor of modern popular journalism in the 1950s and 60s, and was the first to use the eye-catching white on red front page masthead.
The formula has since been copied by the Sun, Daily Star and countless other papers around the world.
Goodbye Wigan
In the 1960s the Daily Mirror sold almost eight million copies a day.
But today - thanks in part to determined competition from the imitators it inspired - circulation has plunged to around two million.
At the same time social change has meant the paper's traditional readers - once symbolised by its own cloth cap and roll your own fags northern cartoon character, Andy Capp - have evaporated.
In its heyday legendary Mirror journalist Keith Waterhouse said the paper's success was based on appealing to "readers in the pubs and back streets of Wigan".
These days it must think more about appealing to secretaries and professionals in the wine bars of the Home Counties.
The market for traditional male-orientated "red top" tabloids has been in sharp decline for at least a decade.
Standards of education have risen, manual jobs have been cut and far more women are in the workforce, looking for something to read on the way to the office.
Blatant
The Daily Mail, which has always appealed to a more female, southern "middle England" market, has been soaring away, overtaking the Mirror to become the second best selling daily paper in the country.
The number one spot is still occupied by the Mirror's one-time upstart rival the Sun, re-launched by Rupert Murdoch in 1969 as a blatant imitation.
Through superior marketing and, after a while, a decision to include more sexual content, the Sun overtook the Mirror in 1977.
Through the 1980s both papers fought a vicious circulation battle, with Mr Murdoch's title emerging as the clear victor by the end of the decade.
Anthrax, not EastEnders
Since then the gap has widened and the Mirror has now officially given up its 20-year battle to win back its place as the country's best-selling paper.
Editor Piers Morgan says the futility of competing directly with the Sun was brought home to him in the wake of the 11 September attacks.
He became convinced there was a new market of more serious-minded people who would buy a popular newspaper packed with hard news and analysis.
"I now hear Mirror secretaries talking about anthrax, not EastEnders," Morgan recently said.
Controversial
"There is a sudden and prolonged hunger for serious news".
Sales figures after 11 September seem to back up Morgan's view.
All the papers sold more copies in the wake of the terror attacks and during the bombing of Afghanistan, but the increase was greatest among the more serious broadsheets.
And those papers - like the Guardian and the Mirror itself - which gave space to controversial anti-bombing views, sold best of all.
Tough job
When the tabloids returned to a more familiar showbiz and celebrity agenda they lost sales, while the Mirror, sticking to hard news, held on to them.
Media commentator and former Mirror editor Roy Greenslade at first doubted Morgan's new approach would succeed and whether the editor understood how to make it work.
But last week admitted he was "wrong". Sales held up and it seems the paper is starting to find a new set of readers.
"Now we can expect another sensible change," Greenslade added, "the dropping of the red top masthead."
But most experts agree the Mirror's attempt to find a new, more upmarket niche, will be tough.
The mid-market is known in the industry as the "killing fields" of UK newspapers, because the formula is so difficult to get right, costs are high and the Mail is a clever and determined competitor.
In a rare admission of failure Mr Murdoch closed his mid-market paper Today after it was, basically, crushed by the Daily Mail.
Fighting talk
At the time he predicted that within a few years there would only be three significant daily newspapers in the UK - his own papers the Times and the Sun - dominating the broadsheet and red top markets - and the Daily Mail, reigning supreme over middle England.
More recently former Sunday Mirror and Today editor Amanda Platell has said nobody in their "right mind" would pick a circulation fight with the Daily Mail.
Morgan and the Mirror seem likely to use politics as the weapon to fight the Mail - trying to appeal to Mail readers who like the paper overall, but don't side with its often stridently right-wing politics.
But Ms Platell doubts there is much of a market for what would amount to a left-wing version of the Mail.
She asks: "What evidence is there of hundreds of thousands of middle class lefties wandering around the marketplace in search of a newspaper?
"Aren't they reading the Guardian already?"