Mr Steiger will make the keynote speech in a session on new ways to finance quality journalism that will also feature John Yemma, Editor-in-chief of the Christian Science Monitor, Olav Bergo, Editorial Advisor for A-Pressen in Norway, and David Cohn, Founder of Spot.us and a Knight News Challenge winner in the United States.

ProPublica reporter Sheri Fink won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting earlier this month for an article published in August in the New York Times magazine. Two other ProPublica reporters were finalists for a Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for reporting that was published in the Los Angeles Times - an impressive performance for an organisation that was only created in 2008 but has emerged as one of the best investigative journalism operations in the United States.

Mr Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, created ProPublica as an independent, non-profit newsroom to produce investigative journalism in the public interest. It is funded by philanthropic donations, and is a leading example of the new models that are being developed to ensure that adequate financing is available for investigative reporting and quality journalism.

The 17th World Editors Forum, along with the 63rd World Newspaper Congress and Info Services Expo, are expected to bring up to 1,500 chief editors, publishers, managing directors and other senior newspaper executives to Lebanon. The events, organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), and hosted by the An-Nahar newspaper, are the global summit meetings of the world’s press.

Full information, including programme and registration details, can be found at www.wanlebanon2010.com.

The Editors Forum will focus on key issues for today’s editors, who must manage both the collective intelligence of a newsroom and the collective intelligence of bloggers, users and readers. Instead of one unique platform, they have to pilot a minimum of four platforms - print, online, mobile, e-reader/tablet - and five storytelling styles - alerts, written articles, podcasts, video reports and social media buzz.

Speakers include:

  Marcus Brauchli, Executive Editor, Washington Post, USA;

  Bart Brouwers, Managing Editor for Hyperlocal Online Media, Telegraaf Media Group, The Netherlands;

  Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager, Google News, Google, USA;

  Alfredo Triviño, Director of Creative Projects, News International, UK;

  Wataru Sawamura, Foreign Editor, Asahi Shimbun, Japan;

  Abdel-Moniem Said, Chairman of the Board, Al-Ahram group in Egypt;

-Tom Curley, CEO of The Associated Press;

  Ricardo Gandour, Director and Executive Editor, O Estado de S. Paulo Group, Brazil.

Plus many others. Details of the evolving programmes can be found at www.wanlebanon2010.com/articles.php....

The events will, as always, be accompanied by a rich social programme, tours, meetings with local and international political, business and cultural leaders, and more. Among the highlights: an opening cocktail at the Couvent St Jean, a convent on a hillside above the city; a Lebanese folklore evening on the Mediterranean in Byblos, said to be the oldest inhabited city in the world; and a gala closing dinner at the Beiteddine Palace, the former seat of the Lebanese Emirs.

WAN-IFRA, based in Paris, France, and Darmstadt, Germany, with subsidiaries in Singapore, India, Spain, France and Sweden, is the global organisation of the world’s newspapers and news publishers. It represents more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries. The organisation was created by the merger of the World Association of Newspapers and IFRA, the research and service organisation for the news publishing industry.

Learn more about WAN-IFRA at www.wan-ifra.org or through the WAN-IFRA Magazine.

Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, WAN-IFRA, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: larry.kilman@wan-ifra.org.