The World Editor & Marketeer conference and Expo, organised by the World Association of Newspapers, ended Friday as a celebration of newspapers' future, in print and as a growing multimedia business.

“Newspapers are a growth business, with circulation, free dailies, market share, advertising revenues and newspaper online consumption continuing to grow, as do the number of newspaper titles,” said Eamonn Byrne, business director for the WAN.

Byrne said the combination of negative and inaccurate news coverage of the newspaper industry each day, along with exaggerated forecasts for digital media's future, gives the world the false impression that newspapers already have one foot in the grave. But the truth is, newspapers are changing along with technological growth, and if they innovate wisely, they will just have more outlets for readers to choose from.

“People still make the decision, every day, to buy a newspaper. There are 1.6 billion people who read a newspaper every day – if that isn't global mass media, I don't know what is,” Byrne said. “We still see print as an integral part of the future, but we will be on the digital platforms as well, providing relevant content, aggregating a growing audience and showcasing it to our advertisers.”

Summaries of conference presentations can be found here.