MEDIA & MARKETING:Highfield's strategy envisages a 2020 where 75 per cent of media consumption is digital and just 25 per cent print. On revenues, the split will be 50-50

IN AN INDUSTRY known for its fair share of dithering, desperation and mixed messages, it must be some relief to investors in Johnston Press – and indeed to employees who survive the chop – that the company is at least led by a man with a plan.

Ashley Highfield (pictured), chief executive of the group since last November, is aiming to “put digital at the heart” of the group. This is not some waffly aspiration for the future, but a thought-through business strategy that signals an imminent change in work practices for the roughly 4,800 people who work for him (including 444 full-time employees in Ireland). It also has consequences for their local communities and the future of journalism itself.

The process of relaunching some 170 paid-for titles and their associated websites begins at the end of next month, with all titles embracing “platform-neutral” publishing by the end of 2012.

The company’s daily titles and its most widely read weekly titles will get their own iPad editions, which will be bundled with subscriptions to the print edition. There will also be free mobile apps and “new and improved” websites that encourage commenting and sharing via social media.

On the print side there will be a “new look and feel” to its newspapers as part of an overall redesign. Some daily titles in the UK are switching to a “bumper” weekly print edition, while some surviving broadsheets are destined to shrink to the compact format. The abandonment of broadsheets could prove the most visible manifestation of change among some of its Irish titles.

After announcing a pre-tax loss of £144 million (€176 million) for 2011 – the group’s third loss in four years – Highfield clearly feels compelled to do something, fast.

His vision of a digital publishing empire is not exactly a surprise, given his CV. Highfield is a former Microsoft UK executive who spent eight years as director of new media and technology at the BBC, where he oversaw the launch of the iPlayer. His appointment to the top job in Johnston was itself a signal of the route the group would choose in an attempt to dig itself out of the mire.

His plan envisages a 2020 where 75 per cent of media consumption is digital, with much of that coming from mobile devices, and just 25 per cent print. Currently the split for the group is 90 per cent print, 10 per cent digital. On revenues, he wants a 50-50 split.

As far as the money goes, this is not a case of Johnston Press ruing income lost to giants such as Google or Facebook. Instead, it has effectively declared that it would like its income streams to resemble those of a telecoms company.

At the moment, just 3 per cent of sales come from subscriptions, a percentage Highfield wants to increase to 50 per cent by 2020, when he forecasts that the business will be run on an average-revenue-per-user basis. ARPU, the common currency of telcos such as Vodafone and O2, might soon form the basis of the media’s performance metrics too. In 2020, Johnston wants to take average revenue of £10 per year from digital products and £25 from print, compared with the £2.30/£30 split of 2011.

There is another element to Highfield’s revenue strategy. In 2011, 90 per cent of the group’s “content creators” were classed as journalists and 10 per cent were users. Highfield pictures a 50-50 split between journalists and users, or “community contributors” as the group dubs them. It seems like a big shift, not just in terms of the group’s business model, but in terms of its editorial product.

“In some ways it will be and in some ways it won’t,” says Highfield. “I don’t see the fundamental role of the journalist or the sales executive as changing. It’s just that they will have technology that helps them do their jobs better.” Then he drops what some journalists working in legacy media organisations regard as the “c” word - curation. “Journalists in the future will be doing as much curating of content as writing their own content,” he says.

The trials of Johnston Press have obvious parallels with Independent News Media, in that both are publicly traded companies, laden with debt, that are trying to do something new and viable to avoid going bust. Johnston Press is somewhat further down the digital line than INM, however, boasting the advantage of a chief executive with a track record of digital innovation.

There is some evidence to suggest local titles enjoy stickier brand loyalty than other segments of the media. Highfield concurs with this, but says “it’s just not something that the regional press has ever capitalised on”. It’s a feature of the market that gives a group such as the Johnston Press the clarity of knowing more precisely what their brands should look like in a digital-first era.

Given digital revenues at the group grew by a pretty uninspiring 0.7 per cent to £18.4 million last year, the company’s confidence that it can grow and thrive springs largely from Highfield’s leadership. It sometimes takes a technology man to know there is nothing to be gained from standing still. Ad revenues from its titles in the Republic are so small they wouldn’t even cover the fees on the group’s new debt facility. Whole categories of print advertising are becoming extinct. There is little option but to go for it, and pray that the plan for a digital future is not derailed by the lingering of a present in which not every reader of local newspapers can afford a regular print habit, never mind an iPad.