Free Pizza

So what went wrong? Johnston was regimented in its approach to newspaper consolidation. It cemented a deal every three years, paying down the accrued debt from strong cash flows in the intervening period and earning a reputation for curbing costs.

In 1996 it bought Emap’s newspaper assets. In 1999 it added Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers. Three years later, its first morning title, the Yorkshire Post, was added to the fold when Johnston acquired Regional Independent Media from the private-equity investor Candover for £560m.

However, Bowdler bit off too much in 2005, spending £475m to expand into Scotland and Ireland, adding The Scotsman and Belfast News Letter.

“People were shouting from the rooftops that we should take on more debt,” said Bowdler. “We were being encouraged to buy back equity, leverage up even more. If we had funded those deals with a rights issue the market would have looked at us askance.”

It didn’t help that at the same time Johnston was spending on new printing presses.

Johnston went through a life-saving fundraising in May, raising £212m in a deeply-discounted rights issue in which the Malaysian tycoon Ananda Krishnan took a 20% stake and the founding Johnston family were diluted down to 7.6%.

Bowdler ensures Krishnan gets a copy of the Leinster Leader so he can read about the horses he races at the Curragh. Even backing a long-odds winner, though, would struggle to sweeten the collapse in value since he bought in.

Fry knows further measures will be needed. If trading deteriorates, Johnston could breach its banking covenants. A debt-for-equity swap is not impossible; asset sales are more likely to give it breathing space. “It is of paramount importance for the group to have a strong balance sheet,” said Bowdler.

The economic headache will continue into 2009. Douglas McCabe at Enders Analysis reckons 30% of local and regional titles — 400 out of 1,300 — could be loss-making within two years, sparking a spate of closures, chiefly among free weeklies. He estimates that the 200,000 livelihoods depending on the UK press industry could be halved over the next six years.

It was bad enough that classified advertising was drifting to the internet. Now the recession has struck another blow, killing off job vacancies and sales of homes and used cars. Those three categories are the lifeblood of local press advertising, which fell 20.4% to £2 billion in 2008 and could fall another 22.5% in 2009, according to McCabe’s estimates.

“Tim and his team will have the ironic legacy of being the best managers of the best-run company in a structurally challenged industry,” said Johnston’s chairman Roger Parry.

Bowdler conceded he has seen the last of Johnston’s industry-leading 35% operating margins, but he has no time for people who claim that local media are dying.

“There is a gloom that newspapers will cease to exist. That is utterly wrong,” he said. “There is still great interest in the local community. Newspapers need to become local portals with new revenue streams.”

Against such a fast-moving backdrop, everything is up for grabs. Few think the four big regional publishers — Johnston, Trinity, US-owned Newsquet and Northcliffe, part of the Daily Mail group — will still be standing alone in two years.

That would require changes to ownership rules. Bowdler believes politicians are sympathetic. “There is a realisation today in government that the way in which our industry has been regulated hasn’t been that helpful and today it is less appropriate than it was.”

He thinks that announcing a merger would speed up change and give the regulators “something to sink their teeth into” — even if it meant months of uncertainty from a competition probe.

“It would be an unnecessary and unwelcome distraction but it depends on the size of the prize and the confidence that it could be achieved.”

Does that mean he favours the long-mooted merger with Trinity? It makes geographic sense, but Trinity’s pension-fund deficit is enough to kill any desire for a deal for now.

Of more pressing concern for Bowdler is planning for his daughter’s wedding in the spring. As he steps back, he is guided by the words of his late father, Henry, who ran a sweet factory in Wolverhampton. He told him to: “Enjoy your job, and don’t retire until you have to.” In his heart, Bowdler knows now is the time for someone else to have a go.

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