I have been curious for awhile why the Newsletter has not been separated from the core. I understand its more of a Admin function, but the same can be said about the Reports module. So, why not create a separate project for this? It is a very important module for most intranets\websites and could be enhanced significantly.
  I have been using the Newsletter module from Dnn-modules.com because it handles opt-in\out, list management, and queueing emails. Another very handy feature, is that since it queues emails, it will not send to the same email twice. Just something I would like to see happen to make the DNN even better.

Good idea.

The same can be said for the Vendor/Banner Ad managment.

we are still waiting for someone contributing this code or volunteering to implement it (meanwhile I try to improve current feature set as far as granted by my time constraints).