A packed afternoon of industry wisdom provided an apt opener for this year's Future Forum.

Rather than any single 'masterclass', three streams provided half-hour takes on issues involving editorial, advertising and marketing, and print and production.

The Newspaper Works' Brian Rock's upbeat take on the role of print would have been a great start to the latter, but I'd heard him in Bangkok and opted to start the afternoon with editorial instead. There the thoughts of chairman David Weisbrot proved enlightening for anyone with an interest in the influence and impact of the Australian Press Council. Particularly, he related the council's principles to a world dominated by social media - the integrity of 'friending' someone so you can use their photograph, and the transparency of native advertising, over which there have been "surprisingly few" complaints.

That's a topic to which the council is considering adding a guideline or standard - to those it has on suicide coverage and contacting patients - along with that of family violence and "aspects of reporting involving children".

While the number of complaints is rising at only 15-20 per cent, the number of complainants is up 300 per cent - "the result of social media" - a logistical challenge as the council establishes specific interest. Israel and climate change are top topics.

About 40 complaints a year go to adjudication, but "sometimes, people just want to vent," Weisbrot says.

Some of the council's position - it cannot censure a publisher, only uphold or not - is perhaps evident in Weisbrot's attitude to a murder report on which Brisbane's Courier-Mail screamed 'Monster chef and the She-male'.

What he calls a "quite salacious report" attracted 1200 complaints, most about the paper's descriptions of the victim over successive days. Weisbrot says the News Corp Australia tabloid had later written a balancing story and had "learned a lot". He didn't address the question of how much time a 169-year-old newspaper - incidentally that year's PANPA Newspaper of the Year - should reasonably need to learn acceptable standards of journalism.

So could a computer do better? Australian Associated Press editor-in-chief Tony Gillies introduced delegates to a world in which newsroom robots turn out thousands of reports, mostly from financial data. A show of hands indicated that only one in five could tell the difference.

And should we be worried, when such algorithms are already used by the likes of Google, Facebook and your car? Software such as Narrative Science's pioneering Quill, Automated Insights' Wordsmith (used by Associated Press) and more, deliver reports which most newspapers would not otherwise have the resources to produce. "All of the possibilities" are preprogrammed, along with instructions about avoiding repetition and how to calculate what is most newsworthy. Some sports systems could even be programmed to let the home team down gently if it lost.

After all, "did reporters enter the industry to rewrite press releases", Gillies asked, prompting questions about the "smell test" and encoding judgement.

"We need to start thinking smart about how we do things... maybe having a computer do what it is good at and having humans do what they are good at," he said.

Computer-generated reports could be "a bit more boring", but speed may be held to make up for pleasantness.

Before I moved to coffee and print, there was Dave Earley of the Guardian Australia to expand some of these themes. As audience editor - joining from the Courier-Mail last year - he is focussed on audience response to content and "keeping people moving around the website".

The editorial role is "data informed, not data led," he says, but adds, "you can write the best piece in the world but it's no good if people don't read it."

Later the programme also delivered Darren Woolley (an insights consultant at regional strategic marketing management consultants TrinityP3), mobile marketing specialist David Murphy - who also joined in a double-act with Mark Challinor during the following day's plenary sessions - and former editor, columnist and "private consultant" Alan Howe.

Around the world and at the two conferences I had attended in the previous couple of weeks the talk is of the constant closure of newsprint mills in response to falling circulations and demand, so I was across to the print sessions to hear from Tania Gordon how dominant supplier Norske Skog was faring locally.

The account director for Australian newspaper publishing, she presents a global overview and faces up to Australia's position as "one of the worst-performing" markets.

Survey results confirm the switch to digital, interestingly noting that newspapers are "too expensive" - which they are by comparison to the Indian ones I had been writing about last week - although one substantial dent in Australian consumption is News Corp's closure of its mX free commuter titles.

Gordon says balancing capacity with demand is challenging: "No-one wants to close their mills," she says. Yet that is what had been happening, locally with Norske Skog closing a machine in New Zealand and converting another (Boyer) to lightweight coated paper.

Alternatives being considered include biofuels - seen as low volume, high return - and renewable energy. An experiment in crude oil replacement in the NSW Central Coast showed it was possible but not viable, at least at current $40/barrel oil prices.

The wood pellets of Norske Skog's Nature's Flame acquisition in New Zealand - "cheaper to buy than to build" - attracted interest, as did geothermal energy production at the Tasman mill, where 22 MW is sold to the grid, helping to stabilise costs.

Delegates also got what they wanted in Gordon's assurance that Norske Skog would "be here for the long term," albeit as a much more diversified business.

Between print and digital lies digital print, but there was little enough reference to it on either of the Future Forum's two days... something that augurs ill at an event which frequently serves to prepare publishers' staffs for what is about to come.

James Haisman wanted to know why not, perhaps showing his frustration that - despite interest - neither of the country's biggest publishers had moved on the inkjet web technology on his watch.

It was an amusing but somewhat unhappy tale, illustrated with an image-modified Les Misérables poster and allusions to the infantry, tanks and air warfare of World War I. Haisman, a tank regiment officer in a past life, equated tanks to digital presses, suggested the major players may be "shell shocked" and acknowledged an internal battle for resources alongside that for ads and audience.

And on a couple of occasions, that "I may be talking to the wrong crowd", and that "anyone who thinks that traditional print is doing well is a lunatic". As would be anyone who thought aloud - in response to a GXpress question - that Australia Post might wake up to the opportunity. Sad really.

In the advertising and marketing stream, Newspaper Works' marketing director Charlie Murdoch was hosting a much more staged affair in The Influence Sessions. I caught Fairfax Media content marketing director Simon Smith, Bo Thorp of hosted video producer 90 Seconds, Mumbrella content director Tim Burrowes and Qantas Group digital and entertainment chief Jo Boundy in a fast-paced discussion on content marketing.

Fast-paced for a fast-moving topic, in which the players and the product refuse to stand still. Unlike video, it's "not massively expensive to experiment" and new opportunities are being targetted. Burrowes warned of charlatans, as the people delivering native continued to change and former PR agencies become "influence agencies". Thorp brought experience of Nordic successes including a bank's TV marketing outlet which had earned respect alongside other financial channels.

In Australia, Burrowes cited bank and superannuation-funded websites, claiming "people don't think who's behind it if it is good enough."

Stressing the importance of quality and authenticity, Boundy said publishers have the huge advantage of audience, although "great content will always find its audience".

In a "baffling time" for the industry, labelling and honesty were good practice and built trust, Burrowes said. "I don't think it will be very long before we hear from the Press Council, and perhaps it won't be a bad thing," he added, echoing the earlier thoughts of its chairman in an adjacent stream.

There was more of course: In the print stream, PricewaterhouseCoopers' Rob Gay had talked maintenance, PIAA's Bill Healey talked training, Fairfax Media's Sean Tait explained the transition which saw two of the group's regional sites replace the production of its city presslines, and a panel discussed print technologies and opportunities. In advertising and marketing, speakers talked research, sales skills and preparation for the future... four hours packed with ideas and incentives ahead of Friday's plenary sessions.

Advertising and marketing delegates let their hair down with a celebration in the Hilton's Zeta Bar of print and digital campaigns in their annual awards, while those who had joined them to network, struggled to make sense of the day's wisdom... and to make themselves heard.

-Peter Coleman

The Future Forum continues on Friday with highlights including a video-link interview with Martin Sorrell, updates from News Corp's Raju Narisetti, NZME's

Jane Hastings and more... plus the annual Newspaper of the Year awards.

Pictured: Advertising panellists Tim Burrowes, Jou Boundy, Bo Thorp and Simon Smith

On our homepage: Here for the long term - Norske Skog's Tania Gordon