Further pain at Johnston Press
20 July 2010
Johnston Press results for 2008 (calendar year) all too eloquently illustrate accelerating local media advertising decline, with property advertising down 10% in Q1 and 55% in Q4
Write-downs have forced Johnston to record losses of £429 million in the year and there is a very real threat that the publisher will breach its borrowing covenants in June 2009, or by the end of the year
While digital is highlighted as the only growth area for the group, we remain concerned that many local publishers are effectively accelerating their own decline by ‘doing too much too well’ in terms of digital news provision at the expense of the quality of their newspapers