Last summer the big and annual world conference of WAN and WEF took place in Gothenburg, Sweden. Just to be clear, we are talking about the international newspaper industry association. Several of us attending last year were stunned when we heard what many of the industry representatives had to say. Among others, I met up with a very upset Martin Jönsson over a beer, who thought that the representatives were on their way of ruining all the great opportunities to debate by keeping their blindfold on. They emphasized clearly that there was no crisis in the newspaper industry.

So it comes, I was just reached by the information that this year’s conference, that was scheduled to take place in India two months from now, is being canceled. The reason stated is that the number of confirmed attendees is too low. Therefore they cancel, and as usual put their hope to everything solving itself after the crisis. A quote from Guardian:

“The economic crisis has had a devastating effect on participation in the events, which are simply not viable at this stage,” Bertrand Pecquerie, World Editors Forum director said in an email seen by MediaGuardian.co.uk.”

“Our belief is that newspaper companies will, by necessity, learn to live with the crisis over the year and will be more willing to invest again in conferences and travel by the end of 2009. The exact new schedule will be confirmed shortly. We need your suggestions in this difficult period.”

Ok, so by the end of 2009 everything should be back to normal again. With such kind of friends, this industry doesn’t need any enemies. Jeff Jarvis writes about it here: “ Talk is not cheap“, and he has mentioned it earlier as well. A lot of people will have things to say and it would be great if we could find a better and cheaper alternative for the industry to move forward. And at wan.org everything runs along as usual. Unchanged, that is.