Addressing Wednesday's annual meeting, he told shareholders the 2014 closure will mean Fairfax "can print our papers for 35 per cent less."

By our calculations, that means for every $100 of printing (operational) costs printing the metro papers at present, it will only cost $65 to print the titles at the regional sites.

Not the $38 mentioned in the Fairfax of the Future documents earlier this year. What's happened? Is the difference the addition of newsprint and other materials, not mentioned in the FOTF document? Or have the "indicative" figures simply been revised?

Hywood didn't specify. Either way, despite the math, a 35 per cent saving doesn't sound half as impressive as a 62 per cent one.

Not that we're arguing that there will be savings. Hywood also makes the point that costs of printing at regional sites will be easier to scale down as circulation and product sizes dwindle.

"By not having to cover the huge overheads of the big plants we can efficiently

calibrate the mix of print and digital product our readers and advertisers are seeking. And this means that if the demand for newspapers declines we can print less and gain the benefit of significant cost savings on the way," he told shareholders.

He refers to the "around $500 million per annum in costs just in the printing and production of the metros".

Warming shareholders upto the time when there will be no printed editions, he adds, "The move from print to digital newspapers has plenty of historical comparisons in other industries", and cites changes in telecommunicatiosns and banking, where customers, "quickly became less dependent on branches".

Fewer branches, fewer dead trees, I guess.

But from where I'm writing this (London, prior to next week's World Publishing Expo in Frankfurt) tree-based newspapers - especially of the free variety - seem to be doing fine. Just need to keep away from those phones!

Peter Coleman