"I am sick and tired of all the doom and gloom reports out there about the death of this industry," said Earl Cox, chief strategic officer of The Martin Agency, in charge of the marketing campaign.

This doom and gloom perception is "inaccurate and it's unfair and it's unacceptable," he added.

Total ad revenue for NAA members in the third quarter dropped 1.5% from the previous year. While, online ad revenue rose 23%, the bulk of it is still in print, which dropped 2.6%.

One of the campaign’s slogans will read: "The Internet is the best thing to happen to newspapers since the paper boy."

Yet decreasing revenues and the press’ deteriorating image were not simply caused by doom and gloom reports: the industry is currently faced with a real structural change.

Newspapers’ “efforts have been blunted, thwarted by circumstances beyond their control," said Edward Atorino, analyst for The Benchmark Company. "There's been a dramatic shift in advertising spending across a range of categories that has affected advertising growth overall. It just disappeared."

Time is not to fatalism though, quite to the contrary. John Kimball, NAA’s chief marketing officer, insists that newspapers must explore and develop platforms they have dismissed so far.  

"Newspapers have multiple channels into the marketplace that we didn't used to have and that's what we're talking about. That audience is not shrinking. That audience is growing."

Source: Las Vegas Sun