If I'm to believe the national media, newspapers are dead or dying. What do they base that on?

Paid circulation is down? How's that different from broadcast TV viewership? Or magazine subscriptions? Or radio listeners? But I can't recall many or any headlines or cable or Internet shout-outs heralding the passing of TV, radio or magazines. Ignored in the cacophony are the self-imposed cutbacks of inefficient distribution to outlying areas with few readers and fewer advertisers, or the growing number of free distribution newspapers.

Those outlying areas are not paper-less. In many or most instances there was a small daily or weekly there before the big metro spread its wings, and those same small dailies or weeklies are still there when the metro retreats to its core market.

And total readership of newspaper-produced journalism and advertising would appear to be growing if you read the current research.
If readership is not a problem, or not the problem, then it must be advertising.

Pick a quarter or year over year, and you'll read that ad revenue for newspapers is down about 25 percent. Certainly not great. But I read in the Oct. 12 edition of the Wall Street Journal that following the "cash for clunkers" program, "auto sales have continued to plummet, falling 23 percent in September from a year earlier."

Did the headline say "Auto industry to disappear"? Nope. It said something about automakers being "restless" and Cadillac dropping its ad firm. Sure, GM will shed Saturn and Pontiac, but most everyone figures GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, BMW, Mercedes and the rest of the auto industry—will be around for quite some time. We're a long way off from a Jetson's-like transportation revolution that will replace cars in the way that cars replaced the horse and buggy.

Look at the housing industry, the retail industry, just about any industry you'd care to mention. Sales are off 20 percent or more in almost every one of them. Are we seeing the end of the housing industry? The retail industry? It's the RECESSION ... DUH!

The digerati will argue that when the economy improves that newspapers will not, that the world is going digital. They're right, but only up to a point. Americans embraced radio when it came along, then TV, then computers. The adoption rate for sophisticated cell phones is faster than that of computers or just about any other electronic device. Did any of them kill off what came before? Or just add themselves to the mix?
And the discussion needs to fall back to advertising. Yes, online advertising has been growing at a decent clip—double digits for several years; fl at this year when all other categories saw a decline. There's no denying a shift in dollars to the Web.

It begs the question, though: is it working? I've seen little research to indicate that online advertising has produced a meaningful return on investment for advertisers. In fact, the few studies I've seen suggest that online advertising isn't working. At least not at a level to match or surpass so-called traditional media.

So the National Newspaper Association tweaked its annual readership survey to try and find some meaning in how Americans use their media. Researchers at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism conducted 500 random interviews from communities across the country served by community papers of 15,000 circulation or less (80 percent of all U.S. newspapers fall into this category).

You should also note that an ongoing ad revenue survey co-sponsored by NNA and the Suburban Newspapers of America has repeatedly demonstrated that community newspaper ad revenue is down only about half that of the metro daily newspapers—the same thing the national press is reporting). Why might that be?

Maybe because local community newspaper advertising works.

Maybe because local community newspaper advertising is affordable. The big metros face the same challenge as regional TV: how do they bring their costs down to work for a small retailer on the south side of the market that has no interest in reaching an audience on the north side of town (customers on the north side of town will not drive past a dozen local dry cleaners to go to the one on the south side).
What we found this year

* 80 percent of people read the supermarket ads or ad inserts in their local newspaper (up 7 percent from a year ago).

* 75 percent read the department store ads or ad inserts in their local newspaper (up 9 percent from a year ago).

* 72 percent read the home improvement or hardware ads or ad inserts in their local newspaper (same as a year ago).

* 67 percent read the discount store ads or ad inserts in their local newspaper (up slightly from a year ago).

* 78 percent read the classified ads in their local newspaper (same as a year ago).

* 63 percent read the public notice ads in their local newspaper (same as a year ago).
Skeptics might say: reading an ad doesn't make it valuable. I'd personally argue that exposure is valuable. But we have stronger information:

* 69 percent of respondents said they use newspaper advertising inserts to help make purchasing decisions.

* 70 percent say they often go looking for, or seek out, newspaper advertising to find information on the latest offerings and sales available in their area.

Do you think the majority of Americans would say they often turn on the TV or radio to view or listen to ads? They turn those on to watch entertainment or listen to music or talk. And if they watched and listened to every station in the market, it's unlikely they would find all the ads that are in one convenient place, such as the local newspaper.

Do you think the majority of Americans can find sales and specials from local community retailers and services on the Web? Most of those ads are national, and you'd have to visit dozens or hundreds or thousands of Web sites to track them all down. Or you could turn to one convenient local newspaper or its Web site.

* 79 percent say that if they had a choice, they'd rather look through the ads in the newspaper than watch advertisements on TV.

* 70 percent say that if they had a choice, they'd rather look through the ads in the newspaper than view advertisements on the Internet.

* Finally, nearly half (47 percent) say there are some days when they read the newspaper as much for the ads as for the other content in the paper. I can't imagine anyone saying they turn on the TV or radio as much for the commercials as for the entertainment or music. Newspaper advertising works. Don't take my word for it. Just listen to what Main Street America is telling us.

Brian Steffens is executive director of the National Newspaper Association. He can be reached at briansteffens@nna.org.