Passion for print and the need to invest were emphasised by newspaper speakers at Ipex’s World Print Summit.

Trinity Mirror group transformation director Rupert Howell said there was “lots of life in newspapers and print” and Ellis Watson of DC Thomson told how the Scottish publisher had spent GB£28 million ($50.4 million) to “prolong the life of my brands and to prove the underlying profitability of my newspapers”.

Addressing the theme of "embracing change to stay relevant and grow your business" at the Ipex event in London, Howell and CityAM founder Lawson Muncaster – two passionate print – men described how they were both very optimistic about the future. Howell told a small audience how he had established an advertising agency two weeks before the 1987 stock market crash, flourished, sold out in the late 1990s, and spent some time with ITV before joining "the biggest newspaper group in the UK", Trinity Mirror in 2012.

"I have lived through three recessions and learned that new technology is always predicted to kill off the old but never does,” he says.

Trinity Mirror was “in a hole” in 2012 and needed a new strategy, new boss and team, and new content, its costs cut and the establishment of integrated teams to go forward successfully.

"We still get the printed edition off-stone at 10pm but now we shape the paper in the afternoon as we see the popularity of our online stories,” he says. “We see mobile as the most important device, and all day we put mobile first.

"We have studios in our newsrooms, focus on video and although it is early days, the results are most encouraging, with 320 million monthly page views and 60 million unique visitors across the group, growing very fast and beginning to monetise.

"We have no choice but to embrace change and new technology because our competition will, digital is a friend of print and TV.”

But he warns there is no shortcut in the process, and all companies and consumers do through the ‘DAFT’ process – denial, anger, fear and transformation. Howell says changes must be led – “you cannot over-communicate” – to make sure everyone is on the same page.

"There is lots of life in newspapers and print; the vital issue is how you adopt change and technology, about the skills of content creators and how you monetise it.

"Seven million people visit mirror.co.uk daily, with Twitter very busy early in the morning as readers follow journalists and stories. We use sponsored content, native advertising and try many new things online constantly. If they work well, wonderful, if they don’t we dump them fast and try something else.”

He was introduced by Lawson Muncaster, who describes himself as a passionate believer in print – “you need a newspaper or you do not have a soul” – but now entering the digital marketplace on the long road to success. “You must have unique content in the morning, afternoon and evening to develop a relationship with your customers," he says.

Earlier Ellis Watson had tackled with gusto the topic of "how to future-proof print in a digital age" on the first day of Ipex. Introduced by Barry Hibbert, chief executive of Polestar group, which is contract printer to DC Thomson's magazine division, both men agreed to "cut the hype” and see just what digital is doing to print, and that print profits had driven the digital print revolution.

Hibbert says that while we cannot ignore the relentless march of digital, “print is still very relevant in today's market and industry research has concluded that market players such as IKEA and Next find a combination of catalogues and online advertising to be the most effective promotional strategy”.

He said Polestar had spent GB£50million ($90 million) on equipment this year, later asserting that "the only way to stay viable is to boost output through technology", reducing the workforce and taking 28 sites in the UK to six, and cutting 22 sites in Europe.

Watson detailed the GB£28 million spend on new technology, within what he says is one of the biggest suppliers of print in the UK, with two divisions covering five newspaper titles (including a free), and a magazine and comic division. He told how he left school at 16, worked at News International in the marketing of newspapers for a decade, convinced even then that “if newspapers were a competitive and aggressive success, they would continue to grow”, and seeing the threat of the internet from the angle that advertisers “would not need us any more”.

After serving as “Rupert’s first head of digital”, he moved into televion and Cellardoor, a company which licensed ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ to 106 countries and four billion viewers worldwide. After four years he joined the Mirror Group as chief executive, where the 20 million readers and between seven to eight million print purchasers indicated that 30 per cent of the (newspaper as a salami sausage) had already been sliced off.

"I could see then that digital would do us more harm than good," he says.

Now as chief executive of DC Thomson, and at the age of 46, "the digital revolution is changing our industry faster than most of us can predict. I am still a passionate printer and buyer of the printed medium.

"We have some of the best brands in the UK and yet our newspapers were declining by five to six per cent annually. We invested GB£28 million in printing plant, including Goss kit, to prolong the life of the brands and to improve the underlying profitability of our newspapers."

Watson describes himself as “a publisher of content and so I will be a part of the future, but we must try to understand the punters and what they want; we must be connected consumers too, be part of the revolution and get involved, rather than just reading reports.

"We cannot control how our children and grandchildren will consume news and entertainment, so there are three steps we all must take: We must all get connected whether we understand it or not; we must understand technology for what it does for the consumer rather than the bullshit of the technology salesman; and we must use threats as opportunities.

"DC Thomson's business depends on cutting down trees, squashing them flat and smearing ink on it, but there are more opportunities in the printing industry than before. Our way was to buy our way through by innovation and enthusiasm, run the business aggressively and there is amazing money to be made."

He says the printing industry will get smaller – more slices off the salami – “but we must be brave; we are all in the same boat, so make sure you do better than the next guy”.

Maggie Coleman