A View From Great Britain

In spite of the gloomy talk about the fatal decline of newspapers and even after my abrupt departure from the Evening Standard, I am optimistic about 2010.

Of course doom-laden sentiments seem convincing. Sales are plummeting, advertising yields head south and the under-30s are unwilling to buy papers. The first result of newspapers in retreat is space being squeezed, then good writers and critics are fired and editors demand an inappropriate measure of cheeriness. At the sharper end where newspapers earn their reputation, the long shadow of Schillings falls across every editor's desk as undemocratic libel laws make investigative journalism a hazardous and potentially punitively expensive business.

And worst of all, unsavoury characters who call themselves proprietors withhold investment, imagination and inspiration to regalvanise a tarnished industry.

But there is hope on the horizon. Newspapers have always shown an amazing ability to adapt and survive. Over the past century, journalists – tough, ingenious and canny – have reinvented newspapers battered by taxes, censorship, paper shortages and trade union restrictions. With undying love for their craft, they stubbornly resist surrender.

And the best proprietors, who have never been in the business merely to pocket vast fortunes, back their editors and journalism and discover new ways to reshape the business. Lord Rothermere and David English did it with the Daily Mail. Rupert Murdoch did it at Wapping. Jonathan Rothermere proved with Metro that targeted freesheets can be profitable.

Since then, Murdoch has fallen flat on his face by waging the London freesheet war. And his defeat ignites my confidence for the future. In general, freesheets are losers. Readers want quality journalism.

Murdoch, newspapers' greatest champion, is paving the way. His "paywall" revolution is the only existing solution to the internet threat and the slide towards amateur "journalism". I know that I would happily pay a £25 per annum subscription to the Guardian online with its 24/7 comment and media and arts coverage. Mail Online's mix of celebrity and vulgarity is already an addiction for millions.

Strangely, News International sites are the weakest, with no USP, but no doubt James Harding and John Witherow will fix that. A new, leaner model of newspaper with paid-for digital content will emerge, allowing original journalism, the lifeblood of newspapers, to thrive once again as we finally pull out of recession. A bonus would be if MPs have the courage to reform the libel laws to favour searching journalism. Exposés – and I don't mean sex scandals – would flourish. And sales would follow.

Cut loose from editing London's last paid-for newspaper, I am occupied with my new life as a portfolio woman, busy with boards, charities and the task I have set myself for the next six months, to visit every arts organisation in London that receives Arts Council funding. And will I reapply for the chair of the London Arts Council? You bet.

• Veronica Wadley is the former editor of the London Evening Standard