At this morning's postponed Q4 2012 meeting, the subject of funding was once again on the agenda as steering committee members John Charnock and Marcus Kirby revealed that the organisation's future beyond 2013 was in doubt.

This followed a similar warning in 2011 and comes at a time when suppliers, whom the DAL relies on for all its funding, are increasingly looking to hold their own events rather than invest large - or in the DAL's case comparatively small - sums on exhibitions and event sponsorship.

Kirby said that the group could fund itself for 2013 in its current, free, informal membership format, but not much beyond. He and Charnock then presented two possible avenues for the group's future both of which, it was agreed at the meeting, should be explored further.

The first was a move to a nominal annual membership fee, likely to be in the region of £50-£100 for an individual member, to supplement the remaining sponsorship income and meet the £5,000 per annum cost of running the DAL, which primarily comprise the venue costs for the quarterly meetings.

A second option, which has only recently been discussed, is the possibility of a tie-up with US-based IDEAlliance, owner of the DAL in the US, which is holding the inaugural UK meeting of its eMedia21 Leadership Council in London next week.

IDEAlliance is understood to be keen on a partnership between the DAL and eMedia21, which is focussed on developing best practices, strategies and organisational and business models that advance content creation, use and display of electronic media.

As with the first option, any such partnership would incorporate a move to a fee-based membership structure.

While raising sponsorship money remains a "challenge", it was suggested that some suppliers might be able to contribute by agreeing to host meetings at no cost, or by offering time and expertise to help upgrade the functionality of the DAL website, both suggestions that were welcomed by the committtee.

Those who attended today's meeting were treated to an informative presentation on the changes taking place in the regional press sector as a result of the "triple whammy" of internet, recession and the phone-hacking scandal.

The presentation, which was penned by The Newspaper Society's Rob Fogwill but delivered by Kirby after Fogwill found himself snowed-in in the Welsh borders, included stats on the change in number of daily, Sunday and weekly titles and current readership trends.

Meanwhile the Content Marketing Association's Patrick Fuller gave a presentation on the importance of content marketing to brands in communicating with their customers and the tremendous growth in the sector that has resulted in seven of the top 10 highest circulation titles in the UK being taken by customer titles.

Sponsor updates were given by Colour Engine's Mark Anderton and Bob Lines of PCS, who talked about the firm's Knowledge cloud-based, saas, publishing platform for digital channels that allows users to "publish from anywhere in a crisis". He also gave a brief intro to the firm's new Social Knowledge platform that delivers analytics and response capability across the two main social media channels.

Anderton gave an update on specialist colour management software distributor and reseller Colour Engine's success amongst UK web offset printers with the Remote Director soft proofing tool and highlighted Alwan's new OEM strategy that has seen it partner with adsend, compose and caldera in the past 12 months.