Newspaper advertising plunged by more than a fifth last month, according to figures released by the company behind the Daily Mail and the soon-to-be-sold Evening Standard.

Daily Mail and General Trust said that its national newspapers suffered a 23 per cent collapse in advertising in the first month of the year, as the rate of decline continued to accelerate.

That compared with a 9 per cent fall experienced in the last three months of 2008.

During that period the decline had remained roughly steady in the run-up to Christmas as retailers promoted seasonal discounts.

Dominic Williams, press director at Carat UK, the media buyer, said that the decline at DMGT's national newspapers was “in line with what the market is doing”.

He warned that on current trends the overall market for newspaper advertising could fall “by double digits — 12 per cent to 15 per cent — during 2009”.

DMGT's Northcliffe chain of English regional newspapers, which owns titles in cities from Bristol to Hull, fared even worse, with advertising down 40 per cent — far steeper than the already severe 27 per cent recorded in the pre-Christmas quarter.

The collapse in advertising outside London has forced DMGT to make cutbacks in local newspapers, and it is considering closing titles in the stricken sector. Peter Williams, finance director, said: “If the economy keeps on going down, we'll have to look at what we publish.”

DMGT, controlled by Viscount Rothermere, said last month that it would sell the London Evening Standard to Alexander Lebedev, the Russian oligarch, for £1.

The shares fell 12¼p to 264¾p.

— News Corporation, parent company of The Times, is to make 65 editorial staff redundant as part of an efficiency drive across the group's four paid-for British newspapers. Fifteen employees each will leave The Times, The Sun and the News of the World, while 20 jobs are to go at The Sunday Times. The cutbacks will mainly affect the production staff and amount to about 5 per cent of the editorial workforce.

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