It's a rare industry that can chronicle its own demise.

Yet that's what many daily newspapers do, often running obituaries detailing their slow death by a thousand cuts from news competitors on the Internet, on television and among niche publications.

But a panel of circulation experts visiting Las Vegas for the Newspaper Association of America's marketing conference this week had a different message on Monday: Contrary to press reports, newspapers aren't dying. Nearly a quarter of the nation's daily newspapers increased their circulation in 2006, thanks to heavy investment in promotions, generous corporate-giving programs and new retention methods.

Panel moderator Michael Memphis, the circulation director of the Carroll County Times in Westminster, Md., said the newspaper association's research showed that 22 percent of daily newspapers -- 171 broadsheets altogether -- expanded their circulation in 2006, and 134 papers boosted their Sunday sales last year as well. There were gains in every distribution size, from 10,000 subscribers to more than 500,000 subscribers. The average pickup among those who added subscribers: 3.97 percent for daily editions and 2.8 percent on Sundays. More than half the dailies that increased single-copy sales added new sales racks in their markets, while the rest refurbished existing sales stands.

"I guess these folks didn't read the news reports saying they were supposed to be losing circulation," Memphis said.

Added panel member Anita Fasbender, circulation director of the Independent Record in Helena, Mont.: "You can grow circulation, but you really need to believe that you can. Newspapers are doing it all over the country. For every article on circulation decline, you can find another on newspapers' amazing profit margins and reader reach."

Circulation at the Review-Journal was 167,000 until 2006, when it dropped following changes in the paper's joint operating agreement with the Las Vegas Sun.

According to the agreement, the Review-Journal distributes the Sun, which until 2005 was a small afternoon paper with a circulation of about 30,000. When a renegotiated operating agreement inserted the Sun into the Review-Journal starting in October 2005, the Review-Journal's overall circulation count dropped as the afternoon editions ended, said Steve Coffeen, corporate circulation director of Review-Journal parent Stephens Media.

Coffeen said Tuesday that the Review-Journal will have made up the circulation losses by April.

Coffeen said the Review-Journal has made a significant push to sign up subscribers for automatic renewal payments via debit card. The paper is also offering special deals for customers who buy long-term subscriptions -- based on two-year terms, for example -- and it has added an electronic edition that replicates the paper page for page on readers' computers or personal digital assistants. Subscribers to the print edition can receive the electronic version for 50 cents a week, while people who buy only the electronic subscription pay $2 a week.

Coffeen said he expects the Review-Journal's circulation to increase 2 percent to 3 percent in 2007, and 4 percent to 5 percent in 2008.

The three panelists who spoke Monday about circulation growth offered up an extensive list of pointers for improving readership.

Bill Lisser, circulation director of the Post-Bulletin in Rochester, Minn., said his paper has grown its circulation of 47,000 in 15 of the last 16 years by setting specific goals on subscription stops and starts.

The company's circulation managers chart stops and starts daily, and compare them with the numbers on the same day a year earlier. The habit generates interest among reporters and other noncirculation employees, who stop by the department to note the paper's progress, Lisser said.

The Post-Bulletin serves a subscriber base that includes snowbirds who leave town for weeks and months at a time, Lisser said. So the paper instituted delivery service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The vacationing subscriber who returns to Rochester on Sunday night, for example, can get the Sunday paper delivered within half an hour of calling the company's round-the-clock customer-service line.

"You need to do more than the customer expects, and 24-7 delivery is one thing they don't expect," Lisser said. "They really appreciate it."

The Post-Bulletin also shut down free Internet access to its daily stories.

"Once we offered free (access online), we saw an immediate rise in stops (canceled subscriptions) and a drop in paid home delivery," Lisser said. "Our numbers went from plus 1 percent (annual growth) to the negatives. So we shut the site down, and we were able to grow circulation again."

Today, the Post-Bulletin allows only paid access to all its stories online.

Lisser also advises colleagues to switch readers to "EZ Pay" plans that automatically deduct renewal charges from customers' bank accounts or credit cards on a set day. About a third, or 14,000, of the Post-Bulletin's subscribers are enrolled in the paper's EZ Pay plan, and the retention rate among those customers is around 90 percent, Lisser said. Special drawings for gasoline cards, travel vouchers and other prizes helped promote EZ Pay to the Post-Bulletin's public.

At the Independent Record, Fasbender said a "growth attitude" is essential. Papers should be prepared to spend on circulation boosters that show promise. It could cost close to $25,000 to land 1,200 new subscribers, depending on the mix of methods a daily uses, she said.

But holding onto the subscribers is also essential to raising circulation, she said.

"The best offense is a good defense," Fasbender said. "The cheapest (reader) is the one you retain."

Circulation managers at the Independent Record have had success with "last issue" stickers slapped on the covers of newspapers delivered to customers whose subscriptions are about to expire. The company has also developed more than a dozen "touch points" that bring customer-service representatives in contact with readers. Welcome letters, start-verification phone calls and grace-period reminders are among methods the Independent Record deploys to keep up with customers.

At The Bulletin in Bend, Ore., circulation growth of 11 percent between 2003 and 2006 came from high visibility in the community, investment in new equipment and "constantly reinforcing to our readers that they made a wise buying decision" when they subscribed to the paper, said Keith Foutz, circulation director of The Bulletin and corporate circulation director of the paper's parent, Western Communications.

"Ask them, 'What else can you have delivered to your house for less than the cost of a postage stamp?'" Foutz said.

"It's tough to grow circulation in any market, even a growing market," Foutz said. "You need to be proactive, plan for success and begin with an end in mind. If you budget (downward), you have the wrong end in mind. Be aggressive, and remember that enthusiasm is contagious. Be proud of where you work and what you do."