Face-to-face meetings will never die out but digital is the way forward in modern society

When Newsweek, one of the most popular magazines in the world, ceased publishing a print edition at the end of last year to embrace an all-digital era, everyone in the media industry heard the alarm bells ringing that it was high time for a change.

Newsweek is just one of many paper-based newspapers and magazines facing a challenge. Time Inc announced in January it was cutting 6 percent of its global staff of 8,000. The New York Times made 30 journalists redundant at the end of last year. Thomson Reuters laid off 3,000 of its 50,000 employees at the beginning of this year.

Traditional print media has to confront the reality that less revenue is coming in with more readers preferring online access to information.

Digital age

Bearing that in mind, the British media company Top Right Group changed its strategy to split its business-to-consumer arm from its business-to-business outlet as early as 2008. The company was previously known as Emap and was once listed on the FTSE 100 Index, based partly on its strength in B2B print publications.

Lara Boro, chief executive officer of Top Right Group International, joined the company in the same year and she was there to witness the experience.

The reason behind the strategy was down to change in the reading habits of customers. "In the consumer world, with the digital age, it was all about the number of customers that you reach - the 'footprint'. It's about how quickly you can get to grow that number, whether it's page views or print circulation," she said.

Boro's expertise in the digital business comes from her career experience. She had been responsible for digital media at the Financial Times between 1999 and 2003 and then in e-commerce, working on MasterCard's electronic payment applications. She moved to Dubai in 2009 to be the chief operating officer of Emap Middle East, focusing on developing the business' digital assets and high-value information products.