Either that’s a specific expectation, or no-one yet knows exactly by how much traffic will shrink next month, but is expecting some kind of loss. Sounds like Witherow is channelling research from over the last year, like our PCUK/Harris poll, which found only five percent of news site users would pay to continue reading - a typical premium-to-free ratio.

On that basis, we project Sunday Times web users would fall from an average 1.22 million a day (ABCe: Feb 2010) to 61,354 following June - but, frankly, we don’t know that for sure either; presumably News International has done its own research of its own readers.

Daily The Times editor James Harding told readers in March: “I think we will lose plenty of unique users, but we will grow the number of regular readers and, more important still, contributors to The Times. And I think we will attract a new kind of reader to The Times.” And Times assistant editor Tom Whitwell said: “The focus is preparing to serve a small, paying audience.”

Presumably, the sums show that even shrinking your audience to a tenth, if they pay, can make for a better business than currently.

Or maybe not. Witherow was told by Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger (via MediaWeek), whose title is more blessed because Guardian News & Media is supported by profits from the wider Guardian Media Group: “That’s two or three weeks’ revenue in terms of cover price. That’s useful revenue, I can see why people are trying it, but it’s not a game changer. It will be interesting if it succeeds but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that this is going to be the panacea.”

Witherow criticised “the belief that you can charge for your newspaper in print, that you can charge for apps, but you put up all this digital content, plus extras, for free”: “Personally, I never thought that this would be a viable financial model and we do need viable financial models because journalism is tremendously expensive.”