With the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge fresh from making their vows, UK newspaper publishers have reaffirmed the role of printed newspapers with a race to be first on the streets with wedding coverage (writes Peter Coleman).

Watching the BBC World coverage at my hotel after the close of WAN-Ifra’s Publish Asia conference in Bangkok, it’s good to see that not all the attention is going to that dress, the earrings, those princes…

There’s a TV commentator clutching his copy of the ‘London Evening Standard’, hot from the presses, making news with a special edition full of wedding pictures and coverage.

Interesting that it’s former Russian spy Alexander Lebedev who’s breaking with tradition to rush two bank holiday special editions onto the streets, one only a couple of hours after the wedding.

As I write, a special from the ‘Daily Telegraph’ is also imminent.

Scrapping the two-edition format was one of a raft of changes made by Lebedev at the ‘Standard’. Giving it away has been another fundamental change to the business model he picked up with the title.

So while I’ve spent the afternoon listening to mobile and online publishers’ angst over how to make money from digital publishing, here’s this Russky showing the world there’s still a quid to be made from printing newspapers and giving them away. With upwards of a million revelers in central London for the fun – my elder daughter texted me from a party in Hyde Park – the ‘Standard’ was printing about 500,000 copies for them at the nearby Harmsworth Quays print plant.

It’s apparently more than half a century since the paper last published on a public holiday, but editor Geordie Greig said the paper was delighted to break that drought to be “the essential paper of record” on such a significant occasion.

The ‘Telegraph’ promises a 40-page edition – being sold with a free poster for £1 – any moment now.

And although, in this winners-orientated world, line honours may have gone, newspapers around the world are set to share the glory.