A group of top newspaper editors are writing a series of columns aimed at defending the newspaper industry and boosting its place in the media landscape.

Compiled by the American Society of News Editors, the columns will be made available for news outlets to republish beginning next weekend, according to an ASNE announcement.

“The columns are the result of a small conference held in January at the Newseum that was organized by ASNE's First Amendment Committee,” the announcement states. “The daylong event brought together 25 leaders in the journalism profession to explore the conventional wisdom -- often mistaken -- about modern American journalism. The committee hoped to use the event as a way to begin circulating a more positive message about the enduring value and vitality of newspapers and other sources of reportorial journalism.”

“We don't have our heads in the sand; we know better than anyone that newspapers are struggling,” said Buffalo News editor Margaret Sullivan, who penned the first column. “But our problems have given rise to a host of hyperboles and outright fairy tales that are doing real damage to our profession.”

The columns, their editor authors, and subjects are listed below:

• Newspapers are washed up. In the column issued today, Sullivan argued that newspapers remain the best source of news and enterprise journalism. She also noted that they still have considerable strengths as businesses; in an age of media fragmentation, newspapers continue to reach a mass market. Newspapers aren't dying, Sullivan said; they are being reinvented as broad-based media companies and internet destinations.
• Newspapers are no longer relevant. In next week's column, St. Petersburg Times executive editor Neil Brown will marshal numbers that demonstrate the continuing relevance of newspapers: 110 million people who still read the Sunday paper; 335,000 who are employed in the newspaper business; five million new readers who have visited newspaper websites in 2010. But Brown will conclude by noting the continuing power and reach of newspapers is defined more by the important stories they still tell and the parents who buy extra copies when their child's name appears in the paper.
• News media are biased. Sixty percent of Americans believe that news organizations are politically biased, but bias in traditional newsrooms has never been lower, Newseum and First Amendment Center president Ken Paulson will argue in his column. Traditional news organizations strive daily to report news and information about their communities without regard to political affiliation or special interests. According to Paulson, the disconnect between truth and perception is the result of the public's confusion about what constitutes real journalism, as well as politicians who think attacking the media is a better political strategy than explaining their actions or positions.
• Newspapers are not connected to community. A good newspaper is a lamp to its community, shining light in dark places and showing the way, says Orlando Sentinel editor and senior VP Charlotte H. Hall, who will list a number of recent newspaper stories that made the communities they were published in better places to live. Newspapers are also quickly adapting social media tools like live chats and citizen blogs to grow their communities of interest, Hall will note.
• The web and digital technologies are killing news organizations. Advances in technology may be adversely affecting their bottom lines, but newspapers are quickly adapting and have become the locus of breaking news on the web, argues ASNE legal counsel Kevin Goldberg of Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth in his piece. For the most part, non-newspaper blogs and social media do not generate original content, and engage instead in recirculation of existing content -- most of it produced by newspapers. With the advent of web publishing, the audience for newspaper content is larger than it has ever been, Goldberg will say.