Johnston Press boss outlines web strategy

THE boss of Johnston Press pledged today to “put digital at the heart” of the business as the UK’s second-largest regional newspaper group swung to a loss last year.

Chief executive Ashley Highfield, a former senior employee at Microsoft, said he wants the group’s web audience to equal its newspaper circulation as he outlined plans to relaunch all titles as integrated digital and print products.

Johnston, which counts The Scotsman and Yorkshire Post among its publications, posted a £143.8 million loss in 2011, compared to a £16.5 million profit the previous year, as the group wrote down the book value of its newspapers by more than £160 million.

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Mr Highfield, who also announced a new lending deal with the group’s banks to take it through to September 2015, wants to scale back some daily newspapers to weekly publications as new web, mobile and iPad offerings are developed.

In a sign of developments to come, the group launched free football smartphone apps for 10 titles, which feature the latest stats, live match updates and team line-ups for local clubs.

The plans have met criticism in recent weeks from Conservative MP Louise Mensch as two Johnston daily newspapers in her constituency, the Northampton Chronicle and Echo and Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, will become weeklies from next month.

Mr Highfield, who worked as director of new media and technology at the BBC for eight years, is in the midst of making significant changes and cuts at the group.

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The company cut just under 670 jobs last year, or 11.3% of its workforce, to bring total staff numbers to 5,245.

The initial phase of the re-launch initiative will focus on five centres currently producing daily print titles - Halifax, Kettering, Northampton, Peterborough and Scarborough.

The revamped newsrooms will publish seven days per week online, with a print edition of a newly formatted newspaper once a week.

Each of the group’s 170 paid for titles will be redesigned as part of the re-launch initiative, but no other daily titles will be converted to a weekly format during the rollout.

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Mr Highfield said: “In all communities that we serve we aim to have a web audience at least as big as our newspaper circulation and to use print to actively cross-promote the web and vice versa, thus remaining relevant in a digital age, while not alienating our heartland audience.”

However, Corby MP Ms Mensch asked for a meeting with the group over the plans to convert the Northampton papers to a weekly edition, claiming on Twitter: “Lots of Corby folk can’t afford iPads to use an app.”

Johnston Press said total advertising revenues decreased by 9% in 2011, with employment advertising contributing to almost half that decline. The rate of decline slowed from 10.1% in the first half to 7.7% in the second half. Total group revenues dropped 6% to £373.8 million.