A glimpse at the Brooklyn Standard, the borough’s newest community newspaper, reveals a publication adamant about the goodness of Bruce Ratner’s development plans.

“Brooklyn’s Booming,” the front page cries out. “Atlantic Yards Will Bring Jobs, Housing and Hoops.” Another article touts the firm’s purchases of property without resorting to eminent-domain proceedings. The tone extends to the op-ed page, which features a piece by the Reverend Herbert Daughtry Sr. about the “new hope” provided by Mr. Ratner’s proposal. It’s headlined: “Building Blocks of Life.”

Indeed, if Mr. Ratner could a design a newspaper that captured his sense of excitement and optimism about his $3.5 billion Atlantic Yards project, the Brooklyn Standard would seem to be it. And it is.

The newspaper’s publisher is Mr. Ratner and its editors in chief are Forest City Ratner Companies vice presidents Barry Baum and Scott Cantone. The company paid Manhattan Media, which publishes four Manhattan community newspapers and Avenue magazine, to produce and write the content. The developer, however, has ultimate editorial control.

“We have said from the beginning of this project that we wanted to provide as much information about Atlantic Yards to the people of Brooklyn as possible,” Mr. Baum, a spokesman for the company, said. “And we felt this was an important way to give people the information about the project through this publication.”

Critics of Mr. Ratner’s plans to build a Nets arena, office space, and housing on a 22-acre plot of land near Flatbush and Atlantic avenues questioned why he decided to pass along the information in a conventional newspaper format.

“They’re trying to fool people,” a spokesman for Develop – Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, a group opposed to Mr. Ratner’s plans, Daniel Goldstein, said.

“They’re putting out a piece of p.r. and making it sound like they’re resurrecting a 19th-century newspaper,” Mr. Goldstein said. Mr. Ratner named his publication after a newspaper most famous for publishing essays about Brooklyn by Walt Whitman.

Mr. Baum is careful to call the Brooklyn Standard a “publication,” rather than a “newspaper.” And in an editor’s note, Mr. Ratner said his publication is “not trying to compete with daily, weekly, or local papers.”

Yet the 16-page debut issue has many of the trappings of a regular newspaper, including a small batch of letters to the editor – cheerful greetings from Mayor Bloomberg, a supporter of the development project, as well as from state Senator Martin Malave Dilan – a calendar page, and a “kids” page with events listings for young children and teens.

It even has advertisements, though at no cost to the advertisers, which included the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the New York Aquarium. Brooklyn’s borough president, Marty Markowitz, also shows up, with an op-ed about the “blossoming of our borough.”

The publication’s first “June/July” issue, which came out Friday, has a circulation of 140,000. The Standard is expected to come out on at least a monthly basis. Bundles of its showed up at the entrances of bars, restaurants, and barbershops throughout the borough, with penetration targeted along Court Street and Seventh Avenue.

The founder and president of the Brooklyn Papers, Edward Weintrob, said he suspected Mr. Ratner was frustrated by his chain’s critical coverage of the Atlantic Yards plans. The Brooklyn Papers have cast a dubious eye on the $200 million in total subsidies that the city and state government have agreed to extend to the project. They have also called for more public involvement in the process.

“Why would he need to go through the trouble of putting out a product like that to promote his interests when the only newspaper in the city that’s consistently raising questions about the Brooklyn project is ours?” Mr. Weintrob said. “Obviously, we’re under his skin.”

The president of Manhattan Media and managing editor of the Standard, Tom Allon, could not be reached yesterday for comment.