Johnston Press is to invest an extra £5m on web development and training its staff with skills to embrace the Internet.

The approach will help readers access a continuous news service through a combination of digital and print channels 24 hours a day with audio visual content as well as text and pictures, according to the group’s annual report.

Revealing profit for 2006 before tax down six per cent – or £8.9m – to £146.7m last year, the company said it did not see advertising migrating to the Internet as a major factor, rather the weak advertising market as a whole.

Total revenues for the year were £602m, 16 per cent up on 2005 due to acquisitions in the second half of 2005 and The Scotsman Publications early in 2006. Operating profit was up from £180.3m to 186.8m.

Investment and acquisitions mean the company remains confident.

Chairman Roger Parry said in his report: “We believe we are well positioned to remain the principal local content provider and thereby to continue to offer advertisers the best means available of achieving high reach and response in local communities.

“The Group remains committed to a strategy of optimising local coverage and advertising reach through a range of media in local communities and to this end during 2006 we focussed heavily on both developing websites and launching new print titles.”

The company believes locally focussed websites are not simply web versions of newspapers but are local media in their own right.

Roger said: “We also believe that these burgeoning media require new and different skills but that many of our staff can make, and indeed have made, the transition so that they contribute to both our print and online media offerings.

“Our approach is to provide training and clear direction to make all of our publishing centres just as successful online as they continue to be in print.

“To give added impetus to this aspect of our business, we will increase expenditure on our digital operations in 2007 by £5m.

“The transition from newspaper publisher to community media company needs to happen in each and every one of our publishing centres, however small.

“The new opportunities and channels must be embraced by the entire organisation. This requires a major cultural shift which is underway but it can only be achieved by strong leadership and an extensive training programme.

“Our pilot project of a fully integrated digital newsroom in Preston, Lancashire, has been very successful and attracted considerable interest from within the industry and the wider media sector. Based on the knowledge gained in Preston the digital newsroom model is being rolled out to all of our primary publishing locations during 2007.”

Johnston has been monitoring changes in the way that people in the UK, Europe and America use local media.

Its study during the past few years shows how technology that less than ten years ago was a novelty in Northern California is now “a fundamental part of most people’s home as well as working lives”, throwing up “huge challenges and opportunities” for a local media company like Johnston Press.

Major developments during the past year, highlighted in the report, are: