Greg Hywood told a meeting of staff in Wodonga no decision had been made on whether the paper would follow its metropolitan counterparts.

Fairfax introduced a paywall for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on July 1.

Readers are given access to 30 free articles on each of these websites before being asked to take out a subscription.

Mr Hywood said the move had already proven a great success with subscription rates well above what had been budgeted, especially for Fairfax’s iPad app.

But any similar move for The Border Mail would rest with the paper.

“You’ve got to make sure you’ve got the scale of audience, that you’ve maximised your audience and then you look at the notion of how you put a digital subscription model in,” he told staff.

“You have to make sure all your digital offerings have scale for advertising and that there’s a revenue component you can take on from subscriptions.”

Mr Hywood said Fairfax Regionals would need to look at such possibilities “market-by-market”.

“It’s all getting back to this point of localism,” he said.

Mr Hywood said the metropolitan paywalls had been a major success.

“We had annual targets and we got to half the annual targets in the first week,” he said.

“The demand for iPad-only is profound, it’s absolutely profound.

“I’m getting feedback that people are just as passionate about the iPad app in the language that they use as they have been about newspapers.”

Mr Hywood spoke about the company’s drive to take hundreds of millions of dollars in costs out of the business while being more attuned to customers’ needs.

Initially, Fairfax was to cut $250 million but a further $60 million cuts were announced early last month.

The cuts have included cutting the 8000-strong workforce by 20 per cent, including about 15 staff at The Border Mail.

“We’re absolutely committed to The Border Mail,” Mr Hywood said later.

“The Border Mail will live because of its commitment to local news and information and its local relationship with advertisers and community groups.”

Mr Hywood said the paper clearly fulfilled a public responsibility “to ask the questions that need to be asked”.

“And we live or die on the basis of the quality of those relationships,” he said.

“All the changes we are making is based on a commitment to sustain and build a better newspaper, a better publication.

“What we’re doing is just managing change.

“Managing change is tough and requires some big calls, but they’re necessary calls.”