Will 2015 be the year UK newspapers can officially say they have turned the corner? After years of trying to figure out how to stem the loss of print subscribers, many British news publishers had good numbers to reportin 2014, as gains in digital subscriptions helped them achieve positive results:

• The UK’s largest newspaper, The Sun, had its digital subscriber base almost double from 117,000 to 225,000 within a year
• The Financial Times saw its overall circulation grow 8% to 652,000 despite having print circulation fall
• The Daily Mail’s profits rose 13% to $111 million behind a 46% increase in ad revenue from its 25 million global daily readers online
• The Guardian’s digital revenues rose 24% and total revenues were up 6.8% overall
• The Telegraphhad profits rise by $4 million to $96 million
• The Times’ digital subscribers rose by 8% to 152,000. The Times also reported a profit of $2.7 million, a far cry from 2013’s $9.2 million loss and the first in 13 years
• The Sunday Times’ digital subscribers rose 12% to 154,000

A year-over-year analysis of each newspaper’s web trafficbacks the revenue data up:

• The Sun’s traffic rose18% to 342,000 monthly visitors
• The Daily Mail’s traffic rose 58% to 19 million monthly visitors
• The Guardian’s traffic rose 67% to 13 million monthly visitors
• The Telegraph’s traffic rose 92% to 7 million monthly visitors
• The Time’s traffic rose 147% to 300,000 monthly visitors
• The Sunday Times’ traffic rose 15% to 120,000 monthly visitors

Insider View:

A lot of learning, testing and hard work went into these positive revenue and traffic numbers and it’s great to finally see some positive numbers. We will be looking to see if UK Newspapers can continue to grow their digital revenues in 2015 and beyond. Assuming they do, this rise in traffic and subsequent digital revenue mean that consumption of online and mobile news is helping to stabilize “traditional” side of UK news publishers who have been beset by declining print subscriptions and circulations. More importantly, it means they have turned a corner from print to digital and that stabilization (and potential growth) can help them reinvest in editorial and technology assets they have had to cut back on in recent years.