MIAMI, Florida (March 11, 2009)—Some 300 newspaper editors and publishers from throughout the Americas will gather in Asunción, Paraguay this Friday for the meeting until March 16 of the Midyear Meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) to learn, among other things, of the state of freedom of the press in the hemisphere.
The meeting will be formally opened on Sunday (March 15) by Paraguay’s President Fernando Lugo and IAPA President, Enrique Santos Calderón, editor of the Bogotá, Colombia, newspaper El Tiempo.
The event will feature, in addition to the organization’s internal affairs, a packed program of activities, among them a concert to be given by the City of Asunción Symphony Orchestra, with a performance by 100 Paraguayan harpists, during a visit that the delegates will make to the headquarters of the South American Soccer Federation (CONMEBOL), where they will be greeted by its president, Nicolás Leoz.
This Friday, author Carlos Villagra Marsal is scheduled to make a special presentation on Paraguayan bilingualism and the future of the Guaraní language, and on Saturday former Colombian President and Organization of American States Secretary General César Gaviria will deliver an address on the war on drugs.Among other professional matters the delegates will learn of the state of the crisis that the United States newspaper industry is facing and will hear from a panel of experts how to gain credibility and learn from their readers’ complaints and comments, an issue focused on in the document “Aspirations of the IAPA.”
More information on these and other activities of the IAPA and its Press Institute is posted on the Web sites www.sipiapa.org and www.institutodeprensa.com.
