The strangest thing about the Future Forum plenaries in Sydney this afternoon was the half-empty auditorium.

Organiser The Newspaper Works had assembled a stellar host of top speakers to address the issues of a challenged industry, and had a full house for the morning sessions.

But a majority of delegates took the free lunch… and went.

The loss was theirs: World class speakers included INMA president Yasmin Namini – who is chief consumer officer of the New York Times – Storyful founder Mark Little, Axel Springer content director Pit Gottschalk, app designer Joe Zeff and World Newsmedia Network’s Martha Stone… not to mention the passionate and well-informed Australian communications minister Malcolm Turnbull.

And the panel session with News, Fairfax, APN and West Australian Newspapers chief executives – a discussion seasoned by the Crikey release of internal News accounts – and another with two young turks of the agency industry. And masterclasses the previous day covering advertising, journalism and production issues.

All of which, thanks to sponsors, delegates enjoyed free and for nothing, paying only for attendance at the evenings awards events.

This afternoon’s digital-focussed programme was very much to the point of the issues facing news media in their transition from print-based businesses. Among speakers, TNW had brought in Twitter director of media partnerships Danny Keens, with association chief executive Mark Hollands arguing that despite their competitive stance, the social media company – like Google and FaceBook – had audiences that publishers could “come and get”.

Keens told how some of the world’s 500 million Tweets a day could be leveraged by publishers within their own platforms.

Mark Little – who recently sold his Storyful business to News Corp – was fresh off the plane to background a business he set up to source and validate citizen journalism. “Every event creates a community, and they’re just people like us,” he says.

Martha Stone, who the previous day had led a session on data journalism, discussed strategies for handline big data – in fact data of all sizes – and outlined publisher experiences. SPH strategic marketing head Geoff Tan – a 2010 PANPA marketer of the year winner – channeled Steve Jobs in a fast-paces run-down on the Singapore’s digital and print initiatives.

And former editor of The Land – and 2013 Hegarty Scholarship winner – Sally White told of publishers Monocle and Quartz which had thrived by going against current wisdom on paywalls, priorities and social media.

The heavyweights had certainly held the morning, Namini and Gottschalk both reporting digital revenues which had now overtaken those from print; German publisher Axel Springer had taken the unusual step of selling its long-established Hamburg daily to fund digital acquisitions and start-ups: “Digitalisation was one of the big things we had to do,” he says. “Now we have a lot of cash to invest, and are in a rush to become the leading media group.”

Peter Coleman

• More reports in GXpress Magazine.

Pictured on our homepage: Pit Gottschalk with the paper his company sold

Right: 2013 Hegarty winner Sally White reports back