Latest News About England: Metro's Steve Auckland: 'There's a lot of money to be made out of print'

Freesheet's managing director on why he puts print first, wooing the urbanites – and the power of repositioned dump bins

A beaming Steve Auckland eases himself into the restaurant seat opposite me and before I have time to ask him a question he says: "Love print." Sorry? "Love print," he repeats. "That's Metro now. Print first, not digital first."

Then the man who became managing director of Metro in December for the second time enthusiastically explains his counterintuitive slogan. "There are a lot of people rushing out of print to go online. But I'm quite happy to rush into print because there's a lot of money to be made out of print, and I'll take as much as possible. And you know what – the agencies are crying out for that message. Everyone I've talked to has said it's refreshing to hear somebody who is actually willing to innovate in print."

Auckland is clearly delighted to be back after three years to run Metro, the newspaper given away free every weekday morning in 50 cities across the UK and Ireland. "I'm not kicking digital out the way because we all know where the future's going to be," he says, "but Metro is a different proposition." He views the paper as a kind of newsprint website. "Look, it's a disposable 20-minute read. You pick it up, snack it and get rid of it, which is exactly what happens on the internet sites."

It's no secret that Linda Grant, the woman who replaced Auckland in 2011 when he was seconded to run Northcliffe Media by Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT), saw matters very differently. She was wedded to digital expansion and experimentation and the company's belief is that she may have pressed for that transition from print to screen faster than advertisers wanted. According to inside sources, Metro's profits did slip under her stewardship. Having enjoyed a bumper revenue period during the 2012 London Olympics, it was obvious that the following year would be tricky. Even accounting for that, the paper didn't perform as well as DMGT expected.

Meanwhile, Auckland was engaged in the difficult business of preparing DMGT's regional publisher, Northcliffe, for its sale to a separate entity, Local World, along with a merger with another group, Iliffe News & Media. Auckland then became chief executive of the new company under the chairmanship of David Montgomery, the former Mirror Group and Mecom chief executive.

It did not prove to be a happy partnership, lasting only 10 months before Auckland resigned in October last year. So, I ask, did you learn anything useful from Montgomery? Auckland, a bluff Yorkshireman noted for his straightforwardness, laughs loudly: "You can always learn something … " After a further burst of machine-gun laughter, he adds diplomatically: "I enjoyed working with him and I learned a lot. I left Local World in good nick for David to take it to the promised land."

It transpires that in the month after walking away from Montgomery's venture, he agreed to carry out consultancy work for DMGT, but before he began he was called by Kevin Beatty, chief executive of the publisher's consumer media division, and asked to return to his old job at Metro as Grant departed.

Auckland at once set about refurbishing his old ship. He acknowledges that Grant's legacy is a much improved website infrastructure. "It's a lot better than when I was there before," he says. "She got that element right." But it made little difference in revenue. More than 90% still comes from print and he sought to ensure that "the basic product" was maximising its audience.

Though 1.36m Metros are distributed each day, making it the third largest UK national paper in terms of audience (after the Sun and Daily Mail), more than 750,000 copies are given away in its heartland, London. Detecting that there had been some slippage – as the audited figures suggest – Auckland started to visit the capital's railway and tube stations to see what was happening. It soon became clear that some dump bins had been moved aside from the main station thoroughfares by Network Rail or Transport for London staff.

He acted immediately. "We pay these guys a lot of money for what we get, so I said, 'Look, we want it here mate because that's where the footfall is.' I started a process to make sure that we're in front again, rather than having bins tucked in a corner. Little things like that make a lot of difference."

He is not aiming to publish more copies but is particularly concerned to reach what he calls his "pure" audience – the youngish, educated, affluent people that Metro long ago nicknamed "urbanites". Auckland recalls being "out at Brixton recently – a brilliant urbanite area – where old-fashioned bins are perfectly placed with loads of copies snapped up by commuters into the city centre.

"By contrast, at Cannon Street, a terminus for incoming commuters, a lot of people are not picking it up because they've read it on the way in, or because they're jumped on by vendors giving out City AM or Stylist magazine or whatever. I want to make sure we're available at the end of the journey as well as the start. Timing is very important. We out-distribute every other title during four hours every morning. The others sell all day long. We just have that narrow window."

Outside London, where Metro is published in partnership with regional publishers, its partners appear happy. Trinity Mirror's chief executive, Simon Fox, describes it as "a strong and long-running partnership", adding: "We are particularly pleased with the energy that has been injected since Steve's return." And Helen Oldham, managing director of Johnston Press's Yorkshire division, says: "Metro is a brand we're proud to be closely associated with. Its contribution and communication has strengthened considerably in the past few months."

What does matter is pleasing Metro's advertisers, and that's where the innovation comes in. The paper recently ran sponsored editorial content for BA asking readers where they would like to send comedian Joe Wilkinson. New York came out top so Wilkinson flew over, blogged about his flight and the city while readers interacted with him online. Result? BA were, naturally enough, delighted.

"We're No 1 in market share of advertising as against other national titles," says Auckland, "and that's not done by discounting." What about pure editorial, however? "The cornerstone is our three-to-five par stories. Metro was invented on the back of that. We can tweak it, but the formula is right." In fact, Metro's front page headlines often catch the eye. During the floods, it had a series of clever puns, none better than "A message from 10 Drowning Street".

Despite his "love print" slogan, Auckland claims that the website turns a small profit and traffic in January, according to the latest ABC audit, was way up on the same month a year ago. More people are visiting through social media and more are reading it on smartphones and tablets. Revenue is the whole point of the enterprise, however, and that's why Auckland – the man with more than 30 years of ink in his veins – remains a confirmed newsprint lover.