Clearly Wyndeham’s owner Walstead has got the ball rolling, first by building the second largest magazine print group and then, in the same calculated fashion, slimming it down to focus on work with sustainable margins.

Whether it be through plant closures, decommissioning or changes to shift patterns, as this week’s briefing on page 8 states, the web offset sector is "reaching its long-awaited endgame".

When (not if) prices go up, the fear is that the impact could be the closure of breakeven publications, but the reality is that for the vast majority of titles, print is a tiny fraction of the cost of getting a magazine to its readers. So, if an increase in print prices could be the difference between life and death, then all the increase is doing is speeding up a clearly inevitable demise.

But the counter argument is that if these titles fall by the wayside, then capacity pressures will be eased and prices will be under pressure again, and we’re back to square one.

But will that happen? Printers want sustainable pricing for what they produce, which is exactly what publishers want for their products.

So the real challenge for publishers is to ensure that their content has value, whether it’s print or online. And then, all we have to do (as readers of said content) is, assuming we value it, accept the fact that we might have to start paying for it. Because that’s the real publishing endgame, not print prices.

Darryl Danielli Editor, PrintWeek