Johnston Press is backing the “resilience of print” as its online business gains a firm footing – as it reports a six per cent drop in profits during 2007.

Pre-tax profit for the year ending December 31 fell to £137.4m, on revenue up 0.9 per cent to £607.5m. Operating profit before non-recurring items was 4.6 per cent down at £178m. It warned that advertising markets looked set to remain ‘challenging’ in the year ahead.

But the company said the rate of advertising decline was slowing, and at the same time highlighted digital revenues up 34 per cent to £15.1m with unique users up 24 per cent and page impressions up 53 per cent among its 323 websites.

Chairman Roger Parry said: “The bedrock of our publishing business continues to be in our long established and highly respected print publications.”

But he said Johnston’s local publishing was changing from it being a newspaper producer to becoming a community media company.

“This change does not mean a reduction in the importance we place on our print publications, rather it extends our horizons by embracing and placing equal emphasis on a range of digital channels,” he said.

His report to the City outlined how a new strategic plan will draw the elements together by:

In the past two years alone the company has launched 200 new print publications to supplement the market reach of its main newspaper titles and get into demographic and geographic market niches where its newspaper readership was weaker, including 126 community magazines targeting 3,000-5,000 homes.

The group intends to continue to target such new “communities” – and develop revenue streams linked by a common interest dispersed across an extended geographic footprint.

And the company has vowed to:

The report continued: “Whilst we envisage local and regional newspapers remaining at the heart of our activities for an indefinite period, our mission statement is quite deliberate in making no mention of specific media channels.

“However, as now, we do anticipate that our newspapers will be read by millions of people for many years to come and, in turn, that they will continue to provide advertisers with a robust and effective means of promoting their goods and services in the numerous local markets which our publications serve.

“Great progress has been made throughout the organisation during the last year in fully embracing and developing the use of digital channels, both fixed and mobile, to complement the already high levels of audience reach which we have achieved in print for many generations past.”

Johnston Press publishes 318 newspaper titles of which 18 are paid-for dailies. Three are morning papers with a regional footprint including The Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post and the Newsletter in Northern Ireland. There are two Sunday newspapers, 164 paid-for weeklies and 134 free weeklies.