Lebanon congress called off, forum postponed as host pulls cash
May 11, 2010 at 06:16 pm by
Staff
WAN-Ifra has called off the World Newspaper Congress – due to have been held in Beirut next month – and will postpone the World Editors Forum to its Hamburg IfraExpo event in October.
Organisers blame the Lebanese host organisation, the ‘An-Nahar’ newspaper, which it sayts has gailed to meet financial commitments.
WAN-Ifra president Gavin O’Reilly says it was “simply impossible” to go ahead without the commitment of the group, which was responsible for security and other significant infrastructure and service expenses.
“We deeply regret that we cannot bring these events to Lebanon, particularly as this will cause immense inconvenience for our members, but this is not feasible without a local partner."
An-Nahar told WAN-Ifra it was unable to provide agreed funds in the aftermath of the 2009 financial, economic and political crisis in the region. The cost of the venue, security and other local expenses was estimated to be 1.6 million Euros and could not be covered by registration fees alone.
The World Editors Forum will be rescheduled from October 6-8 next, and will be held in conjunction with the IfraExpo in Hamburg, Germany, which runs from October 4-6. Both Congress and Editors Forum delegates will be invited to attend the rescheduled event, which will feature key elements scheduled for Beirut, including the Golden Pen of Freedom presentation, World Press Trends update, and other presentations.
The World Newspaper Congress, World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo will be held in 2011. Delegates to the Beirut events will also be invited to attend other WAN-IFRA events in 2010 dedicated to the issues that were on the Congress programme. Some 700 people were already registered for the Beirut events, which was “on target” to reach the expected level of at least 1000.
