• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, May 5, 2016

It's another sad day for print as anyone in the media moves instantly from lamenting the closure of Trinity Mirror's New Daynational to the original question they were posing a two months or so ago -- a new national, in print, what are they thinking?

Johnston Press had bought the title, but there was a clear point to it. Its local distribution would open up the paper to new outlets where it would accompany the company's local titles on shop shelves. But a new national from a company that already has nationals where print revenue is falling through the floor. What was that all about?

I blogged very recently about the very clear and obvious dangers for print. Revenues are down circa 7% (depending on the title) in print advertising and while there are similar gains in digital display for these titles, there is a mismatch. The print part that is losing 7% or so will typically make up around three-quarters of four-fifths of total revenue, digital will only be around a fifth or a quarter of total revenue.

Put simply, the huge pot of cash is losing far more money than the smaller growing pot can make up for. These figures are a very rough averaging out. In Trinity Mirror's case, it has admitted that print advertising revenue is down 19%.

In fact, it comes to something when you see that The Independent is making a song and dance about its claim to now be making a profit and taking on more staff. The reality is that when the paper closed, 150 people lost their jobs, of which 40 came over to the online team. So for every recruitment success the online paper can claim, there are three times as many journalists looking for jobs than those who were found positions on the online version. Claims always have to be examined logically and any claim around print always comes up short at the moment.

So, the long-term future of news titles (i'm not going to use the word "papers" here, for obvious reasons) relied on digital and yet one in seven are blocking digital ads -- one in three if you drill down to Millennial males. With viewability such a huge issue too for publishers, something has surely got to give.

News brands are seeing print revenues slide away, yet seem to be doing very little to insist that ad blockers are not used on their sites. The only way forward, surely, is to ban the blockers and then go hell for leather to set up effective native advertising departments which offer quality articles and online hubs which are available to be sponsored -- The Guardian and The Telegraph are making major progress here. 

One suspects that The Independent isn't the only newspaper we're going to see go digital only in the next few years. When they do, and to be honest, even if they don't, the focus will need to be on growing digital revenues, and surely that means banning the blockers and becoming leads in native. If there's an alternative, I'd love to see it.