Last week's ABC figures provided the regular monthly reminder that newspaper groups can no longer rely on their traditional printed product to bring home the financial bacon.
Most don't now see themselves as newspaper groups - they are content providers, on whichever platform their readers/viewers/listeners want to access it.
Telegraph Media Group is usually held up as the epitome of this evolution, with its spoke-structured newsroom fringed by TV and blogging studios, vast overhead screens showing the traffic top stories are attracting online and a commercial team hovering overhead bursting with ideas for brand extensions and new ways of extending the advertising dollar.
This is reflected in the group's Telegraph Create division, which is mirrored by Times Media over in Wapping, Independent Solutions in Canary Wharf and Guardian Plus in Farringdon, all profiled in our feature this week (page 24).
These divisions are snuggling up more directly with clients and testing their relationships with media and creative agencies who have traditionally owned this territory. Carat's Steve Hobbs (profiled on page 16) buys into this, and says agencies have to work more closely with media owners who are now creating inventory especially for them and their clients.
Times Media has even brought in a fully fledged creative director with a traditional advertising background, producing campaigns such as The Grade for British Airways, within which the media owner creates its own executions separate to creative shop BBH's mainstream activity.
The lines between commercial and editorial are greying, especially in digital formats, producing extra value for clients.
But one note of caution: the new co-operation and digital publishing environments shouldn't be used as an excuse to compromise on quality. Former Mirror Group chief executive David Montgomery's recent facile statement that newspapers no longer need sub-editors in a multi-tasking online world is the thin end of a wedge that undervalues what goes into the content that makes clients want to be associated with it.
Without that quality, no amount of creative solutions departments will be able to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.
Steve Barrett is editor of Media Week
steve.barrett@haymarket.com.