Trinity Mirror’s Wildman on the future of newspapers

In the wake of declining newspaper circulations and the growing need for publishers to diversify content across multiple platforms, the industry is wrestling with some long-term structural challenges, says Trinity Mirror’s new chief revenue officer.

Speaking at the Future of National Newspapers in London on Monday, following a commercially-focused panel debate, James Wildman spoke exclusively to Newsline to explain how publishers should best monetise their audiences in a digitally focussed market.

“We now have a bigger reach; we have more people that come and engage with our brands, and these are incumbent, trusted brands that have been around for a long time and will remain in the public’s hearts and minds forever,” said Wildman, who joined Trinity Mirror in June following three and a half years as managing director of sales at Yahoo.

“But with that larger reach that digital enables, how do we best monetise those audiences?”

According to Wildman, the industry rapidly needs to adopt new commercial models that maintain the equity of older newsbrands, whilst offering advertisers digitally innovative solutions.

“We’re coming to a market which is incredibly dynamic; our incumbency – the fact that we have such trusted and established brands – gives us a fantastic foundation upon which to build, but of course we need to innovate and that innovation is all going to be technologically enabled.”

Watch the five minute video interview, above, in which Newsline editor David Pidgeon asks Wildman about the threat of BuzzFeed, coping with the declines in print circulations and future-proofing publishing businesses.