Sharing the pain

Can Ashley Highfield shore up the Shoreham Herald ?   The former BBC and Microsoft UK new media guru has signed on as Chief Executive of local paper/website/print group Johnston Press, in what seems like a leap from a comfy armchair onto a wooden milking stool.

However, Ashley looked like he was being squeezed at Microsoft in a restructure earlier this month (they've hired Andy Hart, who used to be with the Mail), and Johnston Press have been looking for leadership since John Fry announced he was stepping down in March. The share price dropped a tad at the news of Ashley's arrival (down nearly 3% at just 5p - 0935 BST - the group were trading at over £4 in 2007).   Ashley's been given the prospect of £500,000 in shares as an incentive. At this morning's prices, that would give him 10 milllion shares, around 1.5% of the company.

What needs doing ?  The group have been making new media noises for some time, but physical printing is still a major part of the business, not just for their papers but others like News International (where's that heading ?)  They have 6,000 staff, of whom around 1700 are journalists; they run 318 print titles and 273 websites.  They clearly want to be seen as cutting edge, proudly announcing in their annual report that 5,000 people have downloaded their iPhone app for The Scotsman.  But income from digital is stuck at around 7%.

I've picked the Shoreham Herald at random.  It serves a local population of 20,000, and today gets an Alexa traffic ranking in the UK of 129,273.  My blog, largely read inside a BBC staff of 19,000, gets a UK rank of 39,542 by comparison.