Eurovision's 12^th News Xchange wrapped up in Marrakech with a morning of intensive debate about key issues facing the news industry, as it prepares for a future that even the most forward-thinking experts have trouble in seeing clearly.

The 2013 edition focused on the 'New Realities' everyone in the news industry is facing today. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour gave the opening keynote speech for the conference. 

In a packed first day, delegates enjoyed a wide range of sessions produced by a number of leading organisations in the news arena, including the Associated Press, Global Voices, NOS, ORF, SVT, NHK, Reuters and Russia Today.

Sessions looked at:

• audience behaviour in online viewing and how some broadcasters may be missing out on a key route to market
• the challenges of reporting a war with no foreign correspondents, and how ‘media activists’ have filled the gap on stories like Syria
• how to report a story when you’re the only journalist on the scene, as was the case during the Algerian gas plant hostage crisis
• a radical new approach to workflow – put video first, and bulletins second. What are the consequences?
• story-telling in the high tech age – what does this mean to the business models of old, is the news industry ever going to be the same?
• data journalism – how can you apply it in your organisation? To improve services? What if you don’t have access to big data? Or your audience is already ‘data’d up’?
• hacking – what can we and should we be doing to deal with the threat of hackers who can bring our businesses to a crashing halt?

The first day ended with a second keynote address, given by data guru Dr Hans Rosling of the Karolinska Institute (Sweden), whose eye-opening presentation on statistics and the big picture in global development gave the audience much to think about.

Friday sessions looked at various aspects of the future of journalism:

• constructive journalism – is this the future, is it really new and, if it is, what does it mean for the industry
• new ways of storytelling – as new organisations emerge and challenge the conventional ways stories are told, traditions is news have been revolutionized
• improving media coverage of migration – with 230 million people ‘on the move’ around the world, when is a story about immigrants, and when isn’t it?

The final session was produced by students from two prestigious schools of journalism – Missouri (USA) and Bilgi University (Turkey). As young professionals at the beginning of their careers, they presented their vision for the future, with the proposed agenda for News Xchange 2018.

After the conference, delegates enjoyed free access to the 3^rd Annual News Xchange Documentary Film Festival screening of the award-winning Where My Heart Beats, from SVT’s Khazar Fatemi.

The news industry’s most provocative and most insightful conversation now continues on the News Xchange web-site.

News Xchange 2014 will be held in Prague, Czech Republic.