Countering a string of bad publicity for the American newspaper industry, Online Journalism Review Editor Robert Niles gives some optimistic statistics:

- Online newspaper readership has increased. For instance, though The Los Angeles Times suffered an immense loss of subscribers over the past 4 years, its website topped 100 million page views just in the last month, which is a 34% increase over the past year

-Last year, more than 60 million people a month read newspaper websites, according to a Nielsen Online Custom Analysis for the Newspaper Association of America

- The US presidential primary elections not only drew millions more Americans to the polls, but thousands of Americans are writing and reading about politics on sites such as DailyKos

Niles believes that only newsrooms that are understaffed, under-trained, and that produce half-baked, boring reporting are the ones that will perish. "Engaging, relevant, accurate and enduring information - lives," writes Niles.

Read Niles's complete pep talk here.

Source: OJR