Top media bosses have dismissed doomsayers’ warnings that the end of printed newspapers is near, while speaking at the annual gathering of the industry.
During a CEO panel at the 2016 NewsMediaWorks Future Forum, Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood was directly quizzed on whether he sees a digital-only business model as the future for the company.
In a speech delivered in May, Hywood revealed the publisher’s long term plans to slash weekday print editions for major mastheads Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Australian Financial Review, describing the shift to digital-only publishing models as the ‘next logical progression’.
However at the Future Forum Hywood said, “There is clearly a long life in print-based, we are not saying we are walking away from printing metro titles, it is quite the opposite.
“We respond to consumer demand in a manner of matching what they need and 80 per cent of our consumers access our titles with digital.
“So our organisation is now committed to moving the digital product across the western speaking world, and lifting the quality of that, and on the print side we are giving our consumers the print product they want when they have time to read it.”
The panel also addressed the current state of regional newspapers which has been a hot topic within the industry since APN News & Media sold off its regional portfolio to News Corp in June.
Seven West Media WA CEO Chris Wharton told the audience regional newspapers are ‘performing very well’ in Western Australia which is currently grappling with the mining downturn.
“They are integral parts of their community, we have a number of small communities in Western Australia where we print three to five thousand papers for those communities, but they are profitable,” Wharton says.
“So my view is that regional newspapers are a very important part of our business that contributes around a quarter of our total advertising.”
Discussing News Corp’s future strategy for its Australian Regional Media (ARM) business, executive chairman Michael Miller says the demand for local newspapers is booming.
“We should be confident with the fact that local communities want local newspapers, and ARM is great at serving the communities in northern NSW and Queensland not just as the leading source of community information, but in most places the only,” Miller says.
“Queensland is a growth market with a great future and we believe in the long term future of print, and not just in print, but in news media brands.”
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