AOP: Publishers must put digital at centre of business models, says Sly Bailey

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Publishers must put digital media 'at the centre' of their businesses to survive the current economic downturn, Sly Bailey, Trinity Mirror CEO, told an industry conference today.

Digital is no longer a 'nice to have, it's a must have', but must be integrated into publishers' business models, Bailey told delegates at the Association of Online Publisher's (AOP) Digital Publishing Summit.

By 2011 digital revenues will represent a 'substantial part' of Trinity Mirror's business, Bailey said, adding that she was not concerned about digital profits replacing print revenues.

"Businesses can no longer simply rely on a rising tide of digital growth," said Bailey.

"Building digital audiences is the right thing to do. Attracting millions of unique users to your digital brands is great. But if businesses can't convert those users into revenue and then into sustainable profits they will simply run out of cash. This is no time for vanity publishing.

"Our business models have to be sound and our investment plans have to be able to withstand short-term economic shock. I'm firmly of the belief that there will be casualties in the coming months."

Listen below for the full audio of Bailey's speech:

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According to Bailey, '2009 will be like groundhog day' as publishers experience falls in print circulations and traditional advertising revenues.

"For the lucky we should expect consolidation and for the less fortunate there will be failure. The strongest brands and the most resilient business will survive and prosper and they will go on to become great digital businesses. Those that don't frankly never had a business in the first place."

Commenting on the recent introduction of centralised multimedia desks and the change from a five-step to a three-step news publishing process Trinity Mirror's Midlands titles, Bailey said the group hoped redundancies will be achieved voluntarily.

"These [traditional] processes are an impediment to success in a multimedia world. To build a successful multimedia business and a digital business of scale we have to be prepared to rethink the entire publishing process," she said.

"There's pain as we go through evolving the organisation." Members of Trinity's National Union of Journalists (NUJ) Birmingham chapel yesterday voted to suspended planned strike action , after the publisher confirmed there would be no compulsory redundancies at the affected titles.

While Bailey declined to comment on the likelihood of similar redundancies as new workflows are developed across Trinity Mirror Regionals, she said the publisher is also recruiting 100 new digital journalists.