That was the consensus, drawn from remarks flooding into the WAN Secretariat, about the 59th World Newspaper Congress, 13th World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2006 in Moscow, the largest meeting of the world's press in history.

More than 1,700 participants from 112 countries gathered in Moscow in June for the events, organised by the World Association of Newspapers and hosted by the Russian Guild of Press Publishers. For four days, newspapers in all their manifestations -- print and digital -- were the center of the universe.

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Participants were faced with an overwhelming choice of presentations and events. It seemed, at times, as if every issue of concern to newspaper executives was being addressed simultaneously, by the media executives identified most closely with those issues.

There was Les Hinton of News International and Mathias Döpfner of Axel Springer extolling the core values of newspapers while discussing their strategies for the future. There was Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, lauding the importance of citizen journalism. Pelle Tornberg spoke about the success of his Metro and the free newspaper phenomenon -- and how free newspapers and paid-for titles in partnership worked well together. There was Carolyn McCall of The Guardian, speaking about the format change phenomenon, and the success of her newspaper's new berliner format. There was Nathan Stoll of Google News and Neil Budde of Yahoo News discussing the impact of their new services on newspapers. There was Sanja Gupta of India's Dainak Jagran, the newspaper with the world's largest readership -- 22 million -- explaining what it is like to publish 29 editions and 204 sub-editions across 10 states every day.

And there were meetings with Russian leaders, past present and future. President Vladimir Putin addressed the opening ceremony -- and received a rare face-to-face reproach about the state of Russian press freedom, delivered by WAN President Gavin O'Reilly (read the full speeches here and here). Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sat down with participants at lunch, and gave the Congress a scoop -- that he too had become a newspaper man, having just bought a share in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Delegates also met with Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian First Deputy Prime Minister and possible successor to President Putin.

Glittering social and artistic events completed the scene, featuring the Moscow Virtuosos State Chamber Orchestra and the Russian National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the great  Vladimir Spivakov, as well as an array of Russian folk music and dancers.  There was even the world premiere of "Newspaper Overture: News Flow in the Year of Mozart," composed by Vladimir Martynov expressly for the opening ceremony, which was held in the Kremlin State Palace.

At the heart of it all was an industry that is clearly in full engagement with the challenges of the modern media scene.

"Some talk about a crisis and lack of confidence in our industry because of all things digital, but, as we've seen in the presentations here, any crisis of confidence is certainly unfounded," said Mr O'Reilly. "We should never lose sight of what built this businesses, which is the printed product, and this is where we make most of our profits. Everyone wants to talk about digital, and I understand that, but let's not lose sight of our core product."