Nearly three of four senior execs at top newspaper companies say newspapers are missing major opportunities online, particularly advertising, because publishers don't work together.

Some 72 percent of those surveyed said such opportunities are being lost, according to a study by the American Press Institute, a newspaper industry training organization, reports the Associated Press. Only half of respondents - 49 percent - strongly agreed that newspapers are capable of jointly implementing online initiatives, and 54 percent said newspapers should form partnerships with non-newspaper companies such as Google or Yahoo to pursue online opportunities.

A long-standing complaint is that buying advertising sacross groups of newspapers, including online, is unduly onerous because of differences in selling, delivering and billing for ads.

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) last year formed a group to propose ways to standardize online and offline newspaper advertising. "We're just beginning to understand what those standards should be," John Kimball, NAA head of marketing, is quoted as saying.