I don’t think any informed people who comment on this industry are saying newspapers are dead because people are not consuming their products, print or otherwise. I have written many posts about the fact that they continue to grow their online product at a rapid clip but suffer from a business model that translates poorly to online.

But the 100 million people who read a newspaper the day after the Super Bowl outnumbered the TV audience for the game, the group said in an advertisement that appeared Monday in more than 300 daily newspapers, including The New York Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

[From Newspapers fight negative perceptions in new ads - Yahoo! Philippines News]

It may make the newspaper industry feel good to congratulate itself on being a dominant media source but that will do little to resolve the business model conflict, a cost structure imbalance, organized labor issues, and their ongoing competitive issue with Google News.

Lastly, newspapers have been making a lot of hay recently about printing extra runs of commemorative daily issues, such as with the recent inauguration. They promote this as evidence of the importance of newspapers but in the long run this is simply unimportant, it’s like finding money on the street… you can spend it but you can’t live on it.