Matt McMillan is surprisingly upbeat about the business of local newspapers, even printed ones.

McMillan, CEO of a group of 16 weeklies in Minnesota and Wisconsin, was elected chair of the America’s Newspapers trade group on Nov. 5.

The 1,500-member organization advocates for ways to sustain and grow papers that continue to provide most local news coverage, despite the industry’s severe contraction over the last two decades.

McMillan took the helm shortly after a report found America’s news deserts keep growing. Northwestern University’s Medill School found 213 counties now have no local news coverage and more than two newspapers are closing every week, on average.

McMillan acknowledged the problems but said the report made him think about advertising by wireless phone companies.

They brag about how much coverage they provide nationally, he said, instead of highlighting the relatively few underserved areas. Perhaps newspapers should take a similar approach since, by his calculation, they still provide coverage in 93.2% of U.S. counties.

“You know, while we have challenges as an industry and I don’t want to downplay that at all, it seems like we don’t tell the story about our own industry the way we tell the story about other industries,” he said.

“I think we should be proud of 93.2% coverage even though it might not be exactly where it was before,” he said. “It is still a respectable number.”

I’m a glass-half-empty person when I read about more places losing local newspapers, especially locally owned ones. There’s no denying the ecosystem’s deterioration.

But I appreciate why newspaper owners and operators chose McMillan to lead their organization through its next push to strengthen their industry.

He’s right about the industry needing to better explain why it’s still viable and essential. It’s evolving and embracing new technologies, local journalism remains trusted and appreciated by the public and it’s still a decent business in thousands of communities.

At the same time, local newspapers providing quality journalism and holding officials and institutions accountable are an endangered species. Their existence is precarious and nonexistent in too many places.

Minnesota may be an exception. McMillan said surveys found above average newspaper readership in the state, with 86% of the population reading them every month. That correlates to generally good schools, strong voting turnout and a high rate of people running for public offices, he said.

“I think it probably does have something to do with the weather,” he said. “We’re indoors in the winter and appreciate being able to read about what’s happening, and so we maybe get a little bit more time in our readers’ lives than some of the other markets.”

McMillan’s company, Press Publications, publishes community papers in suburbs of Minneapolis/St. Paul. He said such papers are “in a little bit different position” than papers in major metro areas.

“While it’s challenging everywhere in the industry, you are 100% right about that, I think that the newspapers in some of our more rural areas and smaller communities remain the number one news and advertising source in those communities,” he said.

There are other positive signs for the business, McMillan said. Advertisers have more options nowadays, but after experimenting with different formats, “some of them have realized that the newspaper was and is an important part of their marketing mix.”

“And so I’m hopeful that we can experiment with different ways to market their businesses, that there’s growing realization about the value of readers of local newspapers and how they can respond to ads and be very effective,” he said.

America’s Newspapers continues to seek federal tax credits to support local journalism, even though that’s a longshot in the current Congress.

McMillan said government support “is not 100% the answer.”

“We have to have a business model. But that could be partially helped by a government or a program like that,” he said. “They have that in Canada, they have it in Australia, they have it some other places as well. I think it’s a worthwhile effort to have those (programs) but it’s also important that the industry be able to tell it’s own story, about why it’s important, why newspaper readers are an important audience for your marketing messages.”

McMillan agreed with me that Congress is unlikely to help anytime soon but he said something could happen to change sentiment.

“They say it takes on average five years to get a bill passed through Congress and so it’s important to be there,” he said. “We’re remaining in front and center for when the time could be right.”

The organization is simultaneously doing more advocacy at the state level. It’s planning to work with state press associations as they pursue policies to support local journalism. That could include tax incentives, like Washington’s, and policies encouraging agencies to spend more of their advertising budgets on local media.

Policymakers may be more receptive if they hear McMillan’s positive pitch, that thousands of local newspapers aren’t dying and are worth the public investment.

Skeptics should also hear McMillan’s explanation of why print continues to be a cornerstone for most of America’s 5,428 newspapers.

“In most small markets, small and medium-sized newspaper markets, in the U.S., that print is the business today,” he said. “You know, if it’s not 75% of the business it’s at least 50%.”

McMillan’s even optimistic that the next generation will want printed newspapers. He said members of Gen Z, the generation younger than Millennials, have “a more traditional bent to them and they have high moral values, they’re wanting time away from their screens.”

“We see it in college and high school newspapers — there’s been a resurgence of high school and college newspapers,” he said.

McMillan doesn’t have data to back that up but he’s seen it firsthand at his company’s printing operations, where “we’ve seen a growing number of college and high school newspapers start back up and we’re printing them again.”

I hope he’s right and we start refilling that glass soon.

This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at https://company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.