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These days, there’s no shortage of bad news about bad news. Media watchers in the United States are ringing the death knell for the newspaper industry, as newsrooms are laying off round after round of employees, circulation is slipping, ad sales are down, and readers are flocking to the Internet. Large newspaper corporations are shedding assets, investors are complaining about diminishing returns. Things don’t look so hot right now.

Or do they? The Paris-based World Editors Forum, Reuters, and polling firm Zogby have just released their first global Trends in Newsrooms report, and surprisingly, the results show that the vast majority—85 percent—of editors are optimistic about the future of newspapers. This is not to say that they have their heads stuck in the sand. Forty percent believe that ten years from now, people will most commonly get their news from the Internet (35 percent think print will still dominate). The survey also finds that eight out of ten respondents welcome new media’s ascent with open arms.

Two-thirds of the 435 respondents, all senior staff from newspapers around the world (half from Europe), think that opinion and analysis pages will become more important in the future. Presumably, that’s because even competing wire services tend to cover the same reported news. But with every Dick, Tom, and Harry blogging about their personal opinions in cyberspace, it’s the columnists from brand-name publications whose opinions will continue to carry more weight.