Cohen's recent career in the media has seen changes in the industry's attitudes towards technology. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the delivery of its staple product -- news. "Two and half years ago there was an active non-archiving online debate, for fear it would cannibalize the newspapers," Cohen says. Now the agenda has changed and all the content from the Evening Standard, for example, is available online. It harks back to Cohen's belief in different user experiences. "The web is content driven, it has depth and breadth and context that a newspaper cannot do." Flagship title the Mail has recently had an online overhaul to become a site dominated by large pictures; it goes against the trend by retaining a very deep site that requires users to scroll downwards. To achieve this multi-channel strategy Associated has introduced page editing tools that allow the journalists to build online pages, but most importantly, it has meant a change in culture. Recent ABCe ratings figures revealed increasing traffic for the Daily Mail online, with 46 million page views and 18,039,943 unique users.

"Changing the culture of an organization takes a lot more time and is more important," he says of the importance of behavior over technology. He describes the company as now having a "collegiate" behavior.

Henderson at Northcliffe concurs. "There has been resistance from the business, not from technology." Luckily, both for the duo and for the company, Cohen and Henderson struck and immediate rapport. "Both of us arrived in the same month, which was luck rather than judgement, and we had no baggage or politics, so we had a meeting of minds," Henderson says. As a result the two companies have been able to successfully collaborate on email, infrastructure and storage technology implementations. Northcliffe piloted Microsoft Sharepoint Server for the entire organization, whilst Associated pioneered storage area networks, which have now been adopted across the business. "We have sped up the process of delivering systems and we can leverage their R&D," Henderson says.

Although passionate about news and newspapers, Cohen is first and foremost a businessman. His role as CIO means he is responsible for IT across the entire company. "If there is one word on my lips, it's collaboration. I have three jobs: group IT of nationals, CIO and I sit on the risk committee." He sits on the last not because he is a CIO, but as an operations and process consultant; he is also on the digital forum, which looks at how the group co-operates. Cohen clearly relishes this wide-ranging remit and from our discussion I see it has given him a unique insight into the Associated business and its market. "Most CIOs don't get to do all those things." The people, the business and the product are what Cohen talks of with the most animation. He clearly knows his technology, but the triumvirate of people, business and product is the greatest challenge, and success. "CIOs have to be very good at reading the climate."

On dealing with the business, you get a glimpse of the passionate Chelsea supporter. His views are solid and unmovable and not to be questioned. "If I hear someone say 'business-IT alignment...'," he tails off, reining in the penalty shoot-out tension. "Why are we still talking about this? As soon as you say alignment, you reinforce the separation. If you know the organization, technology is the business, business is technology. Then you can start to do something interesting," he says with more reservation. "You never get CFOs aligning, the only difference is that you are as good as your last failure. You have to deliver world-class service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That is the job you are in." Once a CIO is delivering world-class service the CIO can begin to be creative, "You can do things that no one else can do because no one else looks horizontally." It's enough to prevent Cohen from desiring to move up the greasy pole. "If I can do all this stuff as CIO, why would I want to be MD?"

When Cohen meets with his peers he talks yield, margin, reach and circulation. "They are the things that my customers live and breathe." To meet the demands of yield, margin et al, Cohen says: "Flexibility has to be part of your vocabulary. You are a service provider, there is nothing wrong with this. Acknowledge what you do and bring value. Delivering bullet-proof service is part and parcel of the CI in CIO."