BARCELONA, Spain, May 26, 2009 (AFP) - The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) is convinced that daily newspapers have a future and will discuss growth strategies at a conference that gets underway Wednesday in Barcelona.

Several hundreds of newspaper managers and specialists will attend the two-day "The Power of Print" conference organised by WAN, grouping some 18,000 newspapers from around the world.

"Print continues to be the main revenue generator for newspapers and it will continue to be for a long time," WAN spokesman Larry Kilman told AFP.

In the face of the global economic crisis, newspapers have "a great need for the exchange of strategies to increase revenues," he added.

The crisis has slashed advertising revenues of newspapers around the world, resulting in layoffs and the disappearance of iconic titles.

The growing competition of the Internet has also contributed to the decline in newspaper circulation, which has led many experts to predict their disappearance in the medium term.

But WAN believes that solutions exist to enable media companies to combine the paper and screen to be profitable. A study on the subject by PricewaterhouseCoopers will be discussed at the conference.

The impact of the economic downturn on the sector was highlighted in March when WAN postponed its annual conference scheduled to take place that month in Hyderabad, India because an insufficient number of participants enrolled.