If Rupert Murdoch remains the dominant figure in the world of national newspapers, there can be little doubt as to who was setting the agenda in the regional press industry over the past 12 months.

Step forward, Ashley Highfield.

The newly appointed Johnston Press chief executive stormed into office with a plan to transform the group’s 170 paid for newspapers into what he called “integrated digital and print hybrid offerings.”

Scores of titles were relaunched with new-look templated designs accompanied by new web, mobile and tablet platforms, with more to come in the New Year.

For some, it meant the end of a century or more of daily publication, with the Scarborough Evening News, Halifax Courier, Peterborough Evening Telegraph, Northampton Chronicle and Echo and Northants Evening Telegraph all going weekly at the start of June.

And inevitably there were job losses too.  The daily-to-weekly switches meant smaller newsrooms and the company’s annual report in November showed it cut costs overall by £30m during the year.

As well as staff reductions, the company also embarked on an aggressive programme of newspaper office closures, with more and more reporters centralised in bigger locations.

All of it was hugely controversial, not least among JP’s own workforce, but in the company’s defence, it helped get the company’s debt burden down from £351m to £336m which Ashley made clear in an email to staff was now his number one priority.

In one sense, though, JP was not so much blazing a trail in 2012 as following the lead taken by Northcliffe Media the previous year when it took four of its own daily titles weekly.

Northcliffe saw a significant boost in profitability during 2012, but still ended up being sold to David Montgomery’s new Local World consortium, although its senior management team headed by Steve Auckland will remain largely in place in the new company.

But while some publishers managed to return increased profits by dint of relentless cost-cutting, ABC figures continued to show declining sales across the industry.

In the case of Archant’s Norfolk dailies, it was even worse than had been anticipated.  It emerged that the 2011 figures, which had shown a circulation increase for the Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News, had been falsified, and that both titles had actually lost sales.

The year at least did see fewer newspaper closures than the previous one, with Cambridge First, Archant’s ambitious attempt to take on Iliffe News and Media in the heart of its patch, among the most notable casualties.

The News, Portsmouth, axed its Saturday sports title Sports Mail after 109 years, while two London weekly titles – the Streatham Guardian and Enfield Gazette – went online only.

The Thanet Times also ceased publication after 116 years – a belated casualty of publisher Northcliffe’s unsuccessful attempt to sell it to the KM Group which was blocked last year by competition authorities.

But there was a reprieve for the Tameside Reporter – the  paper where journalistic legend Sir Harold Evans started his career – although its rescue by a local housing association raised some eyebrows.

Alongside the economic challenges, the industry faced a political challenge in the shape of the Leveson Inquiry and the prospect of a new and tougher form of press regulation.

The inquiry, set up as a result of illegal practices at one now-defunct national newspaper, heard from a series of regional editors who stressed that the local and regional press is a very different world when it comes  to journalistic ethics.

But while Lord Justice Leveson’s report when it finally came out in November was overwhelmingly positive about the role of local newspapers, it still recommended that the entire industry should be subject to a form of statutory regulation.

The issue remains unresolved as the year ends, with Prime Minister David Cameron and his culture secretary Maria Miller challenging the industry to come up with a new form of self-regulation which embraces the Leveson “principles” while avoiding the need for new laws.

As to 2013, the rollout of JP’s relaunch programme is set to continue apace, doubtless accompanied by rumours of more daily to weekly switches in the offing.

Of the other big groups, Trinity Mirror has a new management team in place covering both national and regional titles, while Newsquest continues to face industrial troubles in some of its centres as a result of successive pay freezes.

Most interest, though, will be focused on the performance of Local World, whose expansionary ambitions may point to further consolidation of the industry further down the line.

In the words of the old Chinese proverb, the next 12 months are once more likely to prove “interesting times” for the industry.