The year ahead for ... newspapers.

Dominic Williams believes that big and loyal audiences, strong brand values and trusted content mean newspapers aren't dead yet.

The latest six-month Audit Bureau of Circulation figures show national newspapers circulating more than 11 million copies every single day of the week, and that figure doesn't include Metro or any of the other free titles. Meanwhile, the latest Advertising Association revenue projections suggest that display revenue alone for the nationals will be around pounds 1,520 million next year - almost nine times the total ad revenue for cinema, almost four times that for radio, and about twice that for consumer magazines. I'm not making these points to diminish the importance of these other media, but merely to flag up that, whatever the difficulties the national press may face, I am certainly not about to write its obituary.

National press does face a difficult 12 months. Competition from newer media has been a harsh reality for the press for some time and would probably have pushed newspapers' overall revenue down in 2009 even without a recession. As it is I think the drop in revenue is likely to be far greater than the AA projections suggest, and may well reach double digits. But newspapers' ability to control their available inventory through reduced paginations means that average prices are unlikely to fall to the same extent as revenue, although the downward pressure on yields will be considerable. Certainly the national press can no longer take its share of any client's budget for granted.

Just how hard the recession hits daily titles may well depend directly on the advertising strategies that retailers adopt over the next year or so. Retail has been the biggest-spending sector in the national press for some time now, AC Nielsen data suggesting that around pounds 1 in every pounds 4 spent in national press display comes from this sector At the moment, many daily titles are seeing a mini boom in retail spending and seem optimistic that it may continue well into this year. Let's hope so.

But publishers have not been sitting on their hands. Huge investments in new colour presses that allow 100 per cent colour products will help to maintain yields for some titles, while several titles have also pushed up their coverprices over recent months as an obvious means of compensating for lost ad revenue. In this context, the Daily Star's recent price cut seems unlikely to spark another price war.

Potentially, the most significant recent changes have been in the sales structure of two of the biggest players, with both News International and Associated Newspapers now adopting at least some degree of selling across their portfolios. Two sales points representing roughly 40 per cent or more of the market's total display revenue will no doubt be a scary prospect to some. My own view is that it is an understandable and reasonable attempt to reduce their overheads at a time when margins are being squeezed.

I hope these moves also signal a move away from a focus purely on competitors. The national press has become less inwardly focused since the formation of the Newspaper Marketing Agency, but share versus competitive titles is still too prominent a part of negotiations with sales staff. Better that publishers should be fighting ...