The CNN Newspaper Summit to promote the channel's upcoming wire service was an overall success, the representatives of 30 newspapers in attendance said, but failed to provide specifics or formal plans for future subscribers, according to Paid Content.

The idea of the three-day conference was to "canvass" editors to help design and customize the service. Among the demands by editors were more photo options, and access to national, international and breaking news.

Several editors who have complained about the cost of the current leading news wire, the Associated Press, were left with no details about how CNN would match AP's membership rates.

The amount of stories provided by the wire service left some editors concerned, Paid Content reports, with one attendee reporting that fewer than 30 national, international and business stories would be available per day.

CNN said that more details about "service packages" would be available in 2009. The wire service has received criticism about its effectiveness in comparison to the AP, which has acknowledged a "potential threat" from CNN's service.

Members of the UK's regional press will debate the future of journalism training later this week, following a report by the Society of Editors Conference which found that trainees are not meeting the industry's needs in terms of news gathering and writing.

The first Journalism Skills Conference will be held in Greater Manchester on Friday, where delegates and industry leaders will discuss the lack of "core skills" in multimedia.

The need for training to reflect the needs of "converged" newsrooms and "multi-platform" journalism will be the main focus of the conference, Hold the Front Page reports, and take "a strategic view of the issues associated with educating and training journalists.

Source: Hold the Front Page

An "invitation-only, closed-door summit conference" to find ways to "revive the newspaper business" will be held November 13 by the American Press Institute.

50 CEO-level executives, led by James B. Shein, will take the one-day conference at API's Reston, Va. headquarters as an opportunity for a "facilitated discussion of concrete steps the industry can take to reverse its declines in revenue, profit, and shareholder value."

The conference will not be open to the "working press," however, API said it "will publish a full report on the conference."

"There are concrete steps organizations can take to halt and even reverse" the financial "crisis curve" the newspaper industry has seen, Shein, former "turnaround CEO" and now professor at Northwestern University, said Thursday.

The goal of this conference is to "lay out the steps (organizations) will need to take to begin the renewal process" financially, Shein said.

Source: Editor and Publisher

In a decade or so, newspapers will not exist as we know them today. According to Demian Kudryavcev, general director of Russian publishing group Kommersant, speaking at the InfoCom.2008 conference last week, they may differ enormously in the future but they will not disappear. The basic transformations that have to take place for newspapers involve technology; Kudryavcev speculated that the future lies in e-paper.

Newspapers have started to lose Russian readers and the difficult distribution system may be making matters worse, since it focuses not on the sale of the product but on the sale of shelf space. Kudryavcev suggested that it is this aspect that must change.

Kudryavcev believes that tomorrow's paper will be mobile and should be physically independent from distribution, so that readers can access it from anywhere and at any time. It should be material and promoted by keeping its "physical utilization" factor in mind.

"It is necessary to create a new spectrum of services to accommodate new technologies," said the general director. "Today's media have to get ready for a new behavioral model."

However, he pointed out that news sources must not get too carried away with technology itself since that may cause them to lose their audiences. Outlets may soon swap selling information to marketing its "style" and "spirit."