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I didn't realize the news are not even sortable!
I think, though, a little more powerful "news" system would better suit ElkArte.

Sortable of course (maybe with drag&drop).
Then I was thinking something along the lines of "where" show the news (e.g. board index, a specific board, etc.) and I mean each single news.
Some people may like to have news "per member group", and I guess it would be nice.

Anything else?

Sounds like good ideas to me     Maybe start of with an addon that does it (addons are proving to be good at giving a little stress test for the system)

Personally, I've entirely stripped the "News" system from my community theme. It doesn't seem that useful, since most forums have a News and/or Announcements board where new topics can be "announced" to members and also hooked from SSI to provide a news feed elsewhere on a site.

I'd propose that the news system be dropped from the Elkarte core and moved to an official addon package.