The 40-year-old former ad exec and chief operating officer of Independent News & Media, which owns 29.9% of the Sunday Tribune, was announcing a fightback for the newspaper industry, arguing that reports of the newspaper's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Some 1.4 billion people read a paid-for newspaper each day and worldwide newspaper circulation was up 2% last year, according to figures assembled by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). O'Reilly serves as the group's president.

Coming days after Rupert Murdoch's $60 per share bid for Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, news that sent the price of newspaper shares upwards in the days that followed, the campaign seems well timed. Wire services were also in the grip of takeover fever, with Thomson and Reuters in merger talks.

O'Reilly predicted an increase in M&A activity in the sector.

"People think that the bear run on publishing stocks has been overdone, " he told reporters last Tuesday morning.

"There's certainly a lot of money sloshing around. I think that people are going to look at media assets and say, are things as bad as some suggest? [Analysts are] saying that things are overdone, and now is a good time.

"Content is king again and valuations are at historic lows; now's the time to get in, and you have to get in before the other guys. I think you'll continue to see activity. I think you can expect to see quite a significant increase in M&A activity in media, which has been nonexistent, virtually, the past three, four, five years."

Asked about rumours that Denis O'Brien was raising his stake in IN&M, suggesting the telecoms tycoon might tilt for Ireland's biggest media group, O'Reilly told the Sunday Tribune that a statement revealing O'Brien's increased stake, to 7.28% of the company, was about to be released to the stock exchange that afternoon. Did he think O'Brien was edging towards launching a bid for the company?

"I really don't know, " he said. "I mean I really don't know. I don't know what he's doing. These questions need to be directed towards him."

O'Brien, after a breakfast sales seminar in Dublin last Thursday, told the Irish Examiner, "I don't have any plans, honest to God, " when asked if he planned to build his stake further.

He stressed it was "a private investment in the company to be honest with you I don't even handle it myself. I have financial people and advisers who work on that". Through a spokesman, O'Brien declined to comment further. Tony O'Reilly and the O'Reilly family own a 28% stake in IN&M.

O'Reilly was more open in handicapping the battle for Dow Jones. Would Murdoch succeed?

"Not at 60 bucks, " he said. "Certainly Rupert usually gets what he wants. I don't think you can underestimate News Corp's enthusiasm to get it."

Success in the newspaper industry would be driven by further innovation in the product and in operations, including seeking further efficiencies. O'Reilly predicted that the controversial plans to outsource subediting at Independent Newspapers would be emulated by competitors in the medium term.

"I think they'll have to, " he said.

"They'll see us being more competitive.

It means we'll have more money to invest in journalists and named writers, and we'll have more capacity to invest in marketing and all the rest. To me that's a profoundly more important development in the newspaper industry than CDs and DVDs. Those are like a shortterm drug fix. It's not doing anything underlying about the manner in which the paper is put together.

"Too much of the editorial process is back office. The copy is touched by, what, seven or eight people? Now, people defending that will say it was all about quality control. Why can't you sub a story to fit? Why can't you write a headline? Why can't you write a picture caption? Surely what we want to do is upskill our journalists to do the story right.

"So much of subbing in newspapers is a rewrite of something that was written badly the first time. It doesn't necessarily need to be that way. So there are efficiencies in the back room . . . and that's what we're doing in Talbot Street right now. I know it's getting headlines and all the rest. It was voted positively by the NUJ last week, but the negative people will say, it's about cutting quality. Actually it's about the opposite. It's about trying to upskill journalists."

Anthony Dinan, managing director of Thomas Crosbie Holdings, which publishes the Examiner and the Sunday Business Post, would not rule it out.

"We have no plans to do so but we've got to look at everything regarding our competitiveness vis-a-vis our competitors, " he told the Sunday Tribune. "Obviously we noticed that the NUJ voted in favour of the Independent plan and in doing so, concurred with the decision."

Dinan said the Independent is "going to make huge savings on what they are proposing", despite the generous nature of the packages. The Irish Times declined to comment.

O'Reilly said successful newspaper websites, such as those for the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times, were expanding the overall audience for existing brands by as much as 15%.

O'Reilly revealed that the websites of Independent titles in Ireland and the UK would be relaunched within weeks.

"Our website is undergoing a major redesign right now. We are not happy with what we've had. We've had unison and independent. ie. For seven years it's kind of stood still. So you haven't had good 'poster sites' as I call them; it's about the whole redesign that allows us to create more inventory and then allows us to sell it."

The website for the IN&M-owned Belfast Telegraph was recently relaunched, integrating searchable job and property listings from Loadzajobs and Propertynews. com, also owned by the group.