Newspapers are well set for a vibrant future in the modern media environment, a world expert on the press said today.

Forecasters who predict the industry’s decline are making a “profound mistake”, according to Gavin O’Reilly, the President of the World Association of Newspapers.

He said: “The fact is that newspapers are winning well in a world of heightened digital fragmentation.

“In properly assessing the performance of newspapers, one needs to calmly analyse the underlying audience trends for our industry – the quantum of our readership and the quality demographic that we deliver, coupled with the incremental and growing audience that we garner from online – and the conclusion is that our industry is extremely well-positioned at weathering the storm that is media fragmentation, guaranteeing as we do sizeable, reliable and relatively stable audiences.

“All of us in the industry know the big strategic issues and challenges at play in the fast evolving digital world – and, the really successful publishers are those who recognise and capitalise on the newspaper’s relative position in the busy media matrix. Happily, that is the majority of publishers today.”

Newspapers are a $190bn industry globally, reaching 1.7bn readers daily.

Gavin gave figures that showed that advertising in the industry was expected to grow by 17 per cent over the next five years, or at a faster rate than the preceding five years

He said: “Virtually every brokerage report from the investment banks appears to support a new conventional wisdom that newspapers are soon to be some relic of the past, and that newspaper companies are not up for the challenge – or indeed, the many opportunities – that the digital world offers.

“What a profound mistake these commentators are making.

“Newspapers are a vibrant, relevant and commercial proposition for readers and advertisers alike. For investors, the investment in new technology and the delivery of new audiences produces an unrivalled cocktail of success: strong, definable demographics coupled with strong margins delivering consistent returns.”

The Congress, along with the World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2008, has drawn 1,800 newspaper publishers, editors and other senior executives to Gothenburg, Sweden.