The regional newspaper publisher recorded a pre-tax profit of £43.3m for the 53 weeks to 2 January 2010, down 56% from £98.8m in 2009.
Turnover at the Edinburgh-headquartered company was also down, dropping around 20% to £428m from £531.9m in the previous year.
In line with other newspaper publishers, the drop has been linked to freefalling advertising figures, to which Johnston Press is arguably more exposed than other publishers due to its reliance on regional publications, which have been hardest hit.
Total advertising revenue was down £96.4m year-on-year to £272m, a drop of 26.5%, while print advertising declined 27.4% to £256.3m, with employment and property advertising the most severely affected.
Contract printing was down 10.3% to £32.7m, which Johnston Press said was because of the loss of a contract with the Financial Times in Leeds and competitive pricing in the contract print market owing to overcapacity.
However, chief executive John Fry paid tribute to the flexibility of its two main sites, at Dinnington and Portsmouth, which handled an increasing amount of short-run titles in 2009.
Both sites had initially been set up with long-run high pagination work in mind. This allowed work to be moved from Leeds and Sunderland, when these sites restructured.
There was some positive news towards the end of the year, with year-on-year advertising growth in both November and December for employment, property and motors. Elsewhere, newspaper sales dropped just 1.8% to £101.2m and the company recorded an above industry average circulation performance.
Fry said: "The year ended with the group in a much stronger position than it began. Advertising is more stable, circulation trends have improved, our cost base has reduced significantly and we have renegotiated finance facilities for three years.
"We are therefore well positioned to take advantage of any upturn as it occurs. Since the successful refinancing of our debt, we have been trading in line with the expectations we had at the time. That being the case, we have no immediate plans to raise capital."
Shares in the company rose more than 3.5% on the news to 29.25p.
