The World Newspaper Congress and the World Editors Forum concluded last night with a spectacular gala dinner here in Gothenburg, Sweden. It was surely fitting that the main entertainer was a comic illusionist because, over the course of four days, the twin conferences suggested that publishers and editors are living in parallel worlds.
The congress, the publishers' conference, was dominated by the upbeat statistics about the good health of newspaper sales, newspaper launches and newspaper profits unveiled by the chief executive of the World Newspapers Association (WAN), Timothy Balding, and the very positive interpretation of those figures by WAN's president, Gavin O'Reilly. This was the great illusion.
Yet all the discussions at the editors' forum were dominated by how to deal with the decline - whether rapid or gradual - of newspaper circulations and the accompanying flight of advertising as people turn their backs on newsprint in favour of the internet. This was the reality.
In fairness, the split wasn't quite as pronounced as that. There were some eye-opening contributions to the congress, notably by Juan Antonio Giner and Dean Singleton . On the other side, I picked up on a couple of dinosaur comments from editors at the forum. Overall, however, there was a marked contradiction between the claims that newsprint newspapers are flourishing and that online is a mere distraction - yes, that's the O'Reilly message - and the views of those coping with the problems caused by circulation declines.
So let's deal first with those misleading figures. I am not saying that Balding's statistics are false. However, there are two big problems with them. Firstly, as WAN becomes more efficient it is discovering papers that it never knew existed before, so there is no like-for-like comparison with previous years. Secondly, the figures are skewed by the undeniable surge in launches and sales in vast countries such as India, China and, to an extent, Russia.
I spoke to countless editors from the advanced economies - the United States, Britain and other European countries - who were genuinely baffled by the figures. Some were angry too because the optimism generated by the Balding-O'Reilly axis makes it more difficult for them to show the gravity of the crisis they face.
Scepticism about WAN's buoyant message is widespread. On the way to last night's dinner I sat next to a veteran Argentinian journalist who said the papers in his country were gradually losing sales. Shaking his head, he said: "I just don't know how Timothy can say what he's saying."
What is truly sad is that Balding presented the circulation figures under the title "World trends in the newspaper industry". But the last thing the global figures (up 2.7% over last year, reaching 1.7bn readers daily) do is reflect the underlying trend. My hunch is that the 150-year cycle of commercial newspapers is going to be concertinaed in the developing countries to about 20 years. That, surely, is the real trend we face. How else do we explain what's happening in the US, Britain and Scandinavia, the countries that have the longest newspaper histories?
Of course, I realise that Balding and O'Reilly are acting as propagandists for the industry. They genuinely believe that digital missionaries, like me, have helped to influence investors and advertisers to turn their backs on newsprint. (I just wish we had that kind of power). They are right to say that newsprint is still the most profitable media sector, as it will be for at least the next five years.
But the trend, the future, is online. Editors know that, which is why so much of the forum was taken up with presentations about multi-media journalism.
That said, I'm certainly with O'Reilly over the misguided obsession with attracting young readers. Trying to capture youth, or supposedly recapture youth, "is an unnecessary fascination", he said. Advertising agencies are "mesmerised by trying to attract 15 to 16-year-olds". But, once again, there was a disconnect between the WAN president's view and what people were talking about.
Several sessions were devoted to trying to encourage the young to become newspaper readers. What was the point? I recall these debates from 40 years ago. They made no sense then and even less sense today when youth are already accessing the news they want - the news they want - online.
Despite the clash between illusion and reality, however, there were some excellent contributions that offered real insights and genuine hope for journalism (as distinct from commerce). I was particularly taken with the four editors who took part in a session I chaired. Each of them had an exciting story to tell: two spoke of niche newsprint launches (in India and Spain), one told of transforming a sports paper (in Italy) while the fourth revealed how he has managed to launch, and sustain, an online news site (in France). And, of course, the networking is invaluable too.
So it was a goodish conference, but it could have been much better. There is still too much talk about making profits - or not making profits - rather than how to carry journalism forward in the digital age. Editors must take the lead at next year's conference, due to take place in March in Hyderabad, India.
