How does Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey rate as a seer and speaker of unusual truths?
You don't have to be too cynical to wonder how well she predicted the decline of both the group share price and the Daily Mirror circulation. For The People, the less said about that, the better.
Even the sacking of Piers Morgan as editor of the Mirror doesn't seem like an expert piece of forward planning - he has done all right for himself since.
But Sly, as she put it at last week's Association of Online Publishers conference, 'is firmly of the belief' that there will be casualties in the online advertising world as the downturn bites.
At the very least, she says, there will be consolidation, as the internet repeats 1999 in a Groundhog Day of the previous recession. The implication is that the tormentors of traditional media will soon get their comeuppance, and everyone in the business can breathe a sigh of relief.
Is there any real evidence that such a Groundhog Day is imminent? A little. Nearly everyone suffers from the sort of recession we are now entering, but not equally. There are a few signs of pressure on the internet. Google's ad revenues are down, and there have been some new media job losses in the US, although nothing like those seen by newspapers.
A revealing snippet, though, from successful internet entrepreneur and former Financial Times journalist Nick Denton, who was involved in founding the lucrative First Tuesday internet meetings event, Moreover Technologies and Gawker Media, the New York-based internet gossip site.
Fifteen years ago, Denton's fellow FT journalists were bemused to watch him in action. He ignored the conventional computer screen on his desk and spent all his time surfing the internet on his laptop. As a result, the difference between him and the hordes of other former FT journalists is about 拢100m.
Now Denton has trimmed his workforce by 15%, cutting 19 jobs from a total of 133, as he battens down the hatches for recession.
That would seem to be a reasonable metaphor for what is likely to happen: a trimming and slowing of online growth, rather than outright casualties.
It is wishful thinking on a grand scale to believe that we are heading for a re-run of the 2001 dotcom bust. The world of the internet is too well-established and too much a part of our lives. Advertisers are used to the accountability of search, even if it is not always as accountable as it seems.
Where Bailey is obviously right is on the inevitable drying-up of venture capital. Pity the barely established internet company that now has to go cap-in-hand for second-round finance. More imaginative enterprises will simply melt, along with weaker free newspapers of the sort that the Mirror Group has already closed down.
In comparison, regional newspapers are already going through a tough time as their economic mainstays - houses, cars and jobs - implode simultaneously. Across the country, regional newspaper advertising declines average 30%. Managers are all scratching their heads trying to work out how much of the loss is cyclical, and might come back, and how much is be lost forever to the internet.
There might be more hope for national newspapers, the specialist business publishing sector and commercial television. National newspapers can rely on cover-price cash flow and the power of strong brands. The best of the professional press, meanwhile, will always purvey must-have information.
- Raymond Snoddy is a media journalist and presenter of BBC TV's Newswatch
30 SECONDS ON ... SLY BAILEY
- Sly Bailey is chief executive of Trinity Mirror and a non-executive director of record company EMI.
- In 2006, Trinity Mirror controversially awarded her substantial bonuses amid widespread redundancies in the company as its ad revenue tumbled and it attempted to sell off sports and regional assets.
- In June this year, as the company forecast a 10% drop in profits and a share price slump, The Independent's Stephen Glover wrote 'it is difficult to see how Sly Bailey, Trinity Mirror's preposterously well-rewarded chief executive, can remain much longer in her job'.
- In a speech at the Association of Online Publishers conference on 1 October, Bailey focused on slowing growth in digital publishing, calling for traditional media to recognise the importance of digital to its own fortunes.
- She also branded BBC plans to launch local video sites market 'anti-competitive' for their likely impact on emerging businesses in the local digital media sector.