How do you see the relationship between print and online newspapers?

I feel very strongly that print and online editions of newspapers belong together, we would be very naïve to believe that either can exist without the other. You can’t see a builder walking around in his day-to-day duties with an iPad in his back pocket, but he can easily stick a newspaper in his back pocket and most do. Also, there is a huge percentage of our population that are not computer literate. There is also the factor that, if I get more than a page of text, I want to print it out so I have the flexibility to do what I want with that article: read it in stages, transport it, and not necessarily worry about banging it, scratching it etc. Also, it is not that easy to read articles, especially long-form articles, online.

The problem with the internet is the lack of authority of blogs and the like. So news on twitter or facebook or blogs has no real legal recourse – nothing is checked before publishing. There is no responsibility on the authors online to validate and prove what they are claiming or writing. The example I always use is when the New Orleans floods occurred and there was a guy blogging ‘from’ there despite there being no power in the area. He was sending stories out every day about police brutality and other goings on but with no proof and he had no identity, even today, so we have no idea what or where this information was coming from.

The thing with newspapers, and therefore their online editions, is that they do have authenticity; you know that the story has been checked legally and so is reliable. People say never believe a newspaper but the checks are very stringent and I would always believe a newspaper before I believed the internet.

What is the current state of printed newspapers?

Newspapers are in permanent decline, the rate of this decline depends on the innovations that occur. Take Teletext: this was meant to be the big innovation that killed off newspapers but, in fact, it was Teletext that perished first

Newspapers will endure, I’m not saying they will last forever, but they will be here in 20-30 years at the very least. People will continue to wish to have the physical paper in their hands rather than an online edition on a small iPod screen or bulky iPad

Will the content evolve, though?

The shift to in-depth analysis in newspapers will continue. The hard news is now the arena of television, radio and the internet. However, if you are ever in a situation where you watch or read or listen to this hard news for longer than an hour you soon realise how boring it becomes and you become desperate to know the story behind the story and that is what newspapers have the time and skills to give you. Newspapers are already changing to take advantage of that and it is interesting to see that every time an important figure dies or a major news story occurs, newspaper circulations go through the roof. People are looking for more information.

But the online readership numbers are going up and up, how can newspapers compete?

You  have to be wary of the hits online editions claim to achieve. We do not know the duration of these hits – two minutes? Three minutes? With newspapers people spend quality and long times reading them. Also, with newspapers there is no log on, or registration – all the content is in front of you to access as you wish wherever or whoever you are.

There is a huge challenge for newspapers, but the smart publishers are realising that online and print are woven together tightly and go together. I don’t think any website is gathering information like the newspapers are. If there were no newspapers, there would be a huge extra burden on producing electronic newspapers. At present, the print edition bears the brunt of the costs for production, analysis and HR etc and the online editions are just copied over versions. Without the newspaper, those costs get transferred and it is questionable whether online editions could bear the brunt.

Is the next generation going to be an online only generation?

The online editions are great, they perform a really useful function, but the majority of people are still growing up in an era where the printed product is more desirable, they want to hold it and lift/lay it in any way they want unlike the iPad.

How will digital printing affect the newspapers sector?

As digital newspapers are being easily printed for small communities, it makes community newspapers more viable as the huge costs of production are being slashed. These little machines are doing remarkably well, so it is much easier to produce a niche title for 800-1000 people without the overheads and in a viable way. These can be printed overnight on presses that during the day are producing catalogues and brochures.

Alongside this you still need the large scale hardware capable of producing 4m copies a day of papers like The Sun and The News of the World as the demand for this is still out there. From an advertiser’s point of view, then, newspapers are still making sense as there are so many eyes on the pages, more so than would be on the website editions.

Will we see more press investments then?

We have seen the last big press investments ever. It does not make any sense now. The concept of each publisher keeping their own presses is a big waste of time and money, we could have shared our resources. The press manufacturers would not be happy, but we would have saved a lot of money. More and more newspapers will join forces to print centrally.

Is print still the premium medium for advertisers?

How far does a display ad get looked at online compared to the print edition? Online, the adverts are easily discarded where as in print it is more easily viewed. Classified is a whole different matter, people will hunt online in a user friendly way online. But for display, to advertise your new BMW and to get to your ABC 1 readers, I think newspapers are perfect for that and will be for a long time yet. They allow a more targeted system of advertising.