Some U.S. newspaper executives have launched a public relations campaign to show off the good news about newspapers as a way to counter the inundating "doom-and-gloom" coverage the industry has been receiving over the past few years, The Associated Press reported Monday.

"We are still a dominant media, and we don't give ourselves credit for that," Donna Barrett, chief executive of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., told the AP. "The crisis has to do with revenue, not with audience."

Barrett heads up the campaign, called the Newspaper Project, and is also director of the AP. Other executives behind the project include Randy Siegel, publisher of Parade Publications; Brian P. tierney, CEO of Philadelphia Media Holdings; and Jay Smith, former CEO of Cox Newspapers.
The ads, which were unveiled Monday in more than 300 daily newspapers, including The New York Times, show off how important newspapers are. No one denies the economy and advertising dollars moving away from print haven't hurt, but the executives behind the ads say it's important to show the other side.

"We are not trying to be Pollyannaish about the newspaper industry, but all the predictions of our demise are just dead wrong," Siegel told the AP.

Ken Doctor, an industry analyst with Outsell Inc., and former Knight Ridder Inc. executive, told the AP that the idea behind the campaign is important, but pointed out that the industry needs to realise that newspapers are no longer about paper, but about news. "The business model is just busted," he said.

One ad from the Newspaper Project, which ran in newspapers the day after the Superbowl in the United States, points out that "More people will read a newspaper today than watched Sunday's big game. With 100 million daily readers, newspapers are a tremendous scoring opportunity."