"It is a very strange thing for me to say that print will dominate your near future, given digital developments," he admits. But the facts support his contention: 6.7 billion people, or 37 percent of the world's population, read a newspaper daily, 25 percent more newspaper readers than internet users globally.

"There is more advertising money spent on print than digital. That will change, but there is still massive amounts spent on print. You can't ignore the internet, but the internet isn't the only thing that is going on," he says.

He pointed to the ongoing demonstrations in the Middle East to illustrate misconceptions about digital media. There are only 14,000 registered Twitter users in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen combined, compared with a population of 82 million in Egypt alone, he said. "And yet, if you look at the BBC, or Al Jazeera, you could be forgiven for thinking Twitter or Facebook are entirely responsible for the events of the last weeks."

"What I see now in the media industry is a self-produced focus on things that might happen rather than what is happening," he says. "For the community of journalists, Facebook and Twitter are important, and they communicate this importance to their publishers. But the message gets communicated as, 'it's the only thing that is important.' Those who focus their business plans on this exclusively are foolish."

In the longer-term future, newspaper companies are well placed to benefit from multimedia expansion, because they have print at their hearts, something other media cannot provide, he says. "You have access to print, digital, mobile, posters, broadcast on your websites, and you can offer a range of multimedia solutions. And, at the core, you have a medium that's been around for 300 years, reaches 37 percent of the planet, is proven to work, and proven to work better than many of the advertising solutions offered by other media right now."