I arrived in a muggy but cool Hyderabad, India this evening, for the World Newspaper Congress, organized by the newly merged WAN & IFRA orgs, now grandly called World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. The venue and the conference seems to be chaotic this first night, not unlike the state of the newspaper industry these days. At a beautiful and lavish dinner spread, a great song-and-dance routine showcased a lot of different art forms of India. Makes you wonder if they could have saved a small newspaper with the money being spent on this. Of course, I am a beneficiary of that money spend: I am speaking Wednesday on, what else, entrepreneurial journalism, and they are paying for my T&E. So I guess I’m one person helping newspapers die. And if you’ve been following my recent Twitter dustups with MSM journos on crediting and stealing our stories, you would understand why my tears of sorrow at their demise are quickly drying up.

But I speak in jest. Important issues and topics being discussed about an important industry, by currently important people. Follow my tweets and coverage on the site here; the hashtag on Twitter is #WAN. Also WAN’s excellent official blog about the conf is here.