MOBILE APPLICATIONS will be a key growth area for the newspapers of the future, the managing director of The Irish TimesMaeve Donovan said in a public interview at the National College of Ireland (NCI) in Dublin yesterday.

As part of the Legends in Your Lunchtime interview series, sponsored by Newstalk, Metro and the NCI, Ms Donovan said

The Irish Times

, in common with the rest of the newspaper industry, needed to work out how to manage the migration to digital platforms.

"For the newspaper industry, there is more to consider than just the economic recovery," Ms Donovan told Newstalk's breakfast presenter Claire Byrne, who hosted the interview.

Asked about digital revenues, Ms Donovan said irishtimes.com, which removed its pay barrier in July 2008, was "not paying for itself at this point in time".

The company would continue to examine ways to enhance earnings from its digital platforms, including the possibility of charging membership or subscription fees for some online content, she said.

"Newspaper publishers globally are struggling with this. I think there is a great deal of debate in the industry about where this will go," said Ms Donovan, who cited media magnate Rupert Murdoch's decision to start charging for online material from next year.

"If you take this thing five years forward, it will be a mixture of payment forms," she said.

The popularity of devices such as the iPhone meant it was likely that there would be an Irish Timesapp in the future, Ms Donovan said. However, she added that Irish people loved reading print editions and that they continued to have an important role.

"Much has been written about the death of newspapers. If you want to read about the death of the newspaper, the place you'll find most about it is in the newspapers."