Our Business
Johnston Press serves the local media needs of numerous communities in the UK and Ireland. We aim to be, and in the vast majority of cases are, the principal source of local news, information, entertainment and comment in those communities.
We currently provide our services through 18 daily newspapers, 300 weekly newspapers and a huge range of related specialist, locally focussed, print publications. We operate 323 local websites to extend the content and reach of our print products. These websites reach an estimated monthly audience of about 8.2 million.
During 2007 we made only one modest acquisition so our trading closely reflects the organic operations of the business. Our new printing facilities in Dinnington and Portsmouth are working well and have resulted in significant improvements in operating efficiency as well as generating additional contract printing revenues, primarily from News International.
To maintain and expand our audience reach, we launched a number of new publications. These are generally targeted at specific geographic and demographic market niches, with the overwhelming majority being monthly community newsletters serving small rural areas and well defined districts within larger urban and metropolitan communities. The primary purpose of these launches is to layer our local markets with a range of complementary publications, which together are able to provide advertisers with high levels of audience reach. Given that 73% of our revenues come from advertisers, this forms a fundamental and continuing part of our publishing strategy.
We have also continued to invest heavily in content to ensure that our publications remain closely relevant to their local markets. Part of this strategy has included the roll-out of the converged newsroom template which was developed in our Preston publishing centre. This has enabled our newsrooms to benefit from greatly increased audience interaction, which has in turn helped to provide an even clearer focus on content of the greatest relevance and interest to our communities.
Alongside our investments in print, we doubled ongoing annual expenditure on developing our digital channels to £9 million. The increased expenditure allowed us to substantially increase the size of our digital development team in Peterborough, open a digital-only sales operation in London and devote greater resources to promoting our online brands. During the year many of our sites were enhanced and a number of new revenue generating services were launched. The pace of growth remained strong with digital revenues increasing by 34% and unique users by 24%.