Research firm founder also says traditional papers have not found 'magic bullet' for a digital-only future

The Huffington Post and other blog sites do not herald the future of journalism as they do not fund complex original reporting such as the MPs expenses or WikiLeaks scandals, the Leveson inquiry heard on Tuesday.

But Claire Enders, founder of media research firm Enders Analysis, says traditional newspapers such as the Guardian and the Daily Mail have not found the "magic bullet" for a digital-only future either.

Painting a bleak picture of the future of newspapers, she said online was providing "no substitute" for newspapers with consumers "grazing" on the internet rather than thoroughly digesting content.

Research shows the average reader spends 40 minutes with a print newspaper a day, compared to the 15 minutes a month they spend with its digital counterpart. This was not enough to support journalism, she said.

"That's half a minute a day. It's not a significant engagement. People will not pay for something with which they're not significantly engaged," Enders said.

Revenues from digital newspapers underlined her point as she told Leveson that a giant like the Mail Online, which vies with the New York Times for the title of biggest newspaper website in the world, turned over just £16m in the last financial year.

She said this compared to the £608m revenue generated by the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.

"I believe that the Mail Online's website, which, as I said is the second most popular website in the world, is going to be breaking even this year, but this is a very small enterprise. This is really small, even though, as I said, it is one of the most popular websites in the world," she said.

Enders said the "digital pennies" generated by newspapers do not pay for the "origination of hard news" and that blog sites were even more badly placed for the future.

She described The Huffington Post as an "interesting phenomenon" but said it did not "employ journalists to do very complex work" nor had the journalistic culture of newspapers which have hundreds of years of experience in uncovering scandals.

"I mean the Trafigura investigation, the WikiLeaks, the MPs' expenses scandal, the phone-hacking story? These are all enterprises that have not been taken forward by any enterprise but print enterprises," she said.

Even the Guardian, which has a huge digital audience, had not cracked the digital nut, generating £14m in the last financial year – a 10th of the revenues of the Guardian and Observer print editions, she said.

When Enders finished her analysis, Lord Justice Leveson drew breath and said simply: "Sounds all rather depressing, actually". "It is the way things are," replied Enders.

The Guardian revealed on Tuesday that it had generated £14.7m of digital advertising revenue in the year to March, a subset of the newspaper's overall digital revenues of £45.7m – which includes income from its online dating service and iPad subscriptions.

Enders was also questioned about plurality and her views on News Corporation's bid to take control of the 60.1% of BSkyB it does not already own.

She had been commissioned to conduct research on behalf of an alliance of media organisations opposed to the bid, including MediaGuardian.co.uk publisher the Guardian, and said she personally felt the bid could have narrowed diversity in the UK.

"I did feel that the agenda carried forward by News Corp in particular in the years leading up to the transaction was very threatening of services and products that people in this country consume and enjoy," she said.

Enders said she thought it a "paradox" the competition authorities would not waive through mergers of local papers and yet Ofcom, with a few conditions about Sky News' independence, was prepared to give the greenlight to Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB bid last year.

Leveson pointed out that local media competition laws had led to the closure of some local papers.

Last year Northcliffe was forced to close two of its Kent weekly titles after a planned deal to sell the papers to the Kent Messenger Group was cancelled following a referral by the Office of Fair Trading to the Competition Commission.

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