There was a nasty chill in the air during the just completed Media Week Conferences in New York, and not much cozy comfort inside where newspaper executives were going through their paces for an audience of investors and analysts.

How's this for a highlight? 2006 will be a better year because it has 53 weeks (or at least 53 Sundays, which is how ad revenue beans are counted). The sharp-pencil analyst crowd was a step ahead, though, looking for 52-week comparisons for those companies willing to venture an earnings estimate for next year.

Strong online ad revenue growth, from 25 to 50 percent, brightened very slow growth at newspapers proper, mostly under 3 percent, even at Gannett. Watch for more of the same next year as 2005 acquisitions like About.com, Point Roll, Topix.net and Shopzilla get wrapped into online totals.

Those companies that own television stations will benefit from the Winter Olympics and political advertising. On the other hand, newsprint and employees benefit costs will be growing faster than ad revenues. Hence, watch for trims in weight and width of the paper product and continued reductions in headcount, in newsrooms and business and production departments.

Not so long ago profits margins and growth in earnings per share were the foundation of these presentations. 

As I observed after the summer meetings, the cloudy prospects for growth have now become Topic A for investors. High margins on a flat or declining base don't generate any investor excitement. As for earnings per share, often propped up by stock buybacks, the less said the better.

Conversely advertising rates, sometimes treated as a proprietary secret, got a lot of mention. Several companies were specific about next year's rate card; for instance The New York Times itself will increase rates 5 percent, its New England and regional group, 3 percent. How can you do that, one persistent analyst asked repeatedly, in the face of big circulation losses? The reply: Newspaper ads still deliver excellent results, so the market will bear some price increases.

Here are some other highlights.

Best Performers: Lee and Media General were fast horses in a slow 2005 field, outpacing all the big boys in advertising growth. Both operate in mid-sized to small city markets, Lee with a midwestern and western roster and Media General all in the southeast. This says in a reverse way that current industry circulation and ad performance woes are especially concentrated in big city metros.

Best Presenters: By and large the conferences offered drab news drably presented. Two exceptions were McClatchy's Gary Pruitt and The Washington Post's Don Graham, reliable live wires in this crowd.

Pruitt skipped his usual rock music side slow but delivered a spirited riff on doom-and-gloom forecasts. "This is the 400th anniversary of the newspaper, and the 399th of predictions of our demise. The idea of death-by-Internet is back with a vengeance." But add online to printed paper audience, and "more people want what we produce today than did yesterday. This is hardly the profile of a failing industry." Pruitt also took a shot at craigslist and Google base. "Free is a good way to sell a used sofa if you're not in a hurry ... but is free better than functional? ... Free isn't always worth the price."

Graham cultivates a reputation as a straight shooter and embedded a concern in his sales pitch. WashingtonPost.com garners a huge national audience and continues to improve quickly with a blizzard of new features, Graham said. "How much can it grow in profits? That may be a critical question" both for the Post and the industry. Coming from the CEO of a company where online accounts for 11 percent of advertising revenues, more than double the average, that's a sobering assessment of what is supposed to be the industry's way out of the woods.

Monster versus CareerBuilder. Both publicly-traded Monster and industry-owned CaeerBuilder, the two heaviest hitters in online recruitment, had spots on this year's presentation lineup. A lot has changed since four years ago, when Monster founder Jeff Taylor delivered a we-will-bury-you luncheon speech, provoking then Tribune CEO John Madigan to depart from his text and declare that the industry was just beginning to fight back. Now Monster is trying to boost its presence in local markets and small businesses, CareerBuilder's strengths. It is CareerBuilder that is running expensive profile-raising Super Bowl ads, both in 2005 and 2006. Each of the companies is focused on the market share fight rather than profits, plowing cash flow back into sales and expansion.

And About Knight Ridder? The nation's second largest newspaper company, on the block with a first round of bids due today, chose not to present. Gannett and McClatchy offered indications of tepid interest, implicitly more for some set of papers than the whole company. Other executives ducked with the comment that they had heard a number of potential buyers have emerged and that, itself, is a good vote of confidence in the industry.