First, it was San Jose Mercury News columnist Mike Cassidy reaching out to readers with a how-we're-going-to-survive, state-of-the-newspaper series of columns.

Now, it's publisher Mac Tully (also a VP of the Merc's parent company, Bay Area News Group).

Tully chimed in with a column on Saturday that started by declaring that things are getting better and the recession might finally have found its bottom. Then he launched into a dual-pronged approach of trumpeting the success of the Mercury's plans for revenue generation, and slapping the Chronicle silly.

For the first part, Tully pointed out that readership numbers are indeed down (10 percent for the daily edition, 6 percent on Sundays) over the last six months, but ascribed it to the paper's master plan to eliminate "circulation with low readership," deeply discounted subscription rates and deliveries to some outlying areas. It's essentially the same model recently employed by the Chronicle: cut printing costs while retaining only the most profitable readers.

Still, in a year-over-year comparison, Merc readership was fairly stable. "A massive 624,000 adults will read the Mercury News on a weekday; 673,000 will read us on Sunday, and that number will climb to well over one million over the course of a week as we pick up casual readers," Tully wrote.

He also made sure to point out that while the Bay Area News Group only declined about 5.5 percent and 3.2 percent in daily and Sunday editions, respectively, the Chronicle dived 25.8 percent and 23 percent in those categories.

Then he added this: "Keeping our print readership the same as the prior year . . . at the same time we were consciously reducing low-readership circulation, was a significant achievement for us. That result was not replicated by our neighbor in the Bay Area. The San Francisco Chronicle showed declines in its print audience of 7 percent daily, 11 percent Sunday and even a 3 percent reduction in its integrated online and print audience in the same 11 county market area."

It seems decidedly like a little-brother complex, going to such great lengths to trumpet one's own success while simultaneously pointing out the failings of a rival. Perhaps he just wants to take part, in his own small way, of chumming the water around Fifth and Mission for any sharks that might be circling.

The sentiment rings especially true by the time Tully gets to his closing statements. "I'm often asked whether newspapers are going to make it as an industry," he writes. "The answer is a resounding yes."

He might as well have added, "But not the Chronicle."