1. “STATE OF CONVERGED
NEWSROOMS”
National Public Radio
A Confidential Report to NPR Senior Programming
Staff
Environmental Scan Series
Vol. 1, No. 1
(Annotated)
AUTHOR:
Stewart J. Lawrence, Consultant
Audience and Corporate Research Department
National Public Radio
December 2006
National Public Radio, December 2006
2. 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary………………………………………………………………….3
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….5
Part One: Convergence –Why Now?………………………………………….6
Part Two: Scope of Current Practice………………………………………….8
Converged Newsrooms: Print-Online 10
Virtues of Online Autonomy 11
Converged Newsrooms: Print and TV 12
Key Areas of Convergence 12
The Tribune Precedent 14
Converged Newsrooms: Other Settings 14
Part Three: Issues in Dispute…………………………………………………..15
News Quality 15
Effect on Journalists 16
Summary 16
Print-Online Convergence – Too Timid? 17
Webcasting 17
Citizen Journalism (“Cit-J”) 17
Part Four: Summary Reflections……………………………………………18
Appendix: Selected Resource Materials…………………………….……21
Blogs 22
Online Newsletters 23
Books 24
Research/Training Centers 26
Conferences 30
Case Studies 32
3. 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The literature on the “Newsroom of the Future” is growing exponentially. A topic
previously confined to corporate boardrooms and to the occasional industry “think-
piece” is now a focus of published debate throughout the US media industry. Other
signs of a momentous sea change include:
o Recent establishment of highly-visible media research and training centers
devoted exclusively to newsroom convergence, including Newsplex, the Media
Center, and J-Lab.
o Publication of a dozen scholarly books on “convergence” since 2001 alone,
with at least two dozen more scheduled to appear before 2010. In addition, a
proliferation of online newsletters and blogs devoted exclusively to
convergence issues.
o Modifications of academic curricula to accommodate the expected industry
demand for a new breed of cross-trained, Internet-savvy news reporter.
Analysts attribute the new industry emphasis on newsroom convergence to a
combination of market, technology and consumer-driven pressures:
o Increased concentration of media ownership
o Easing of legal restrictions on local market cross-platform ownership
o Digitization of news communications generally
o Catastrophic news events, including 9/11, that have fueled a growing interest
in breaking news and continuous news.
o Consumer discontent with the established media, coupled with growing
reliance on the Internet and demands for interactivity.
Convergence issues are playing themselves out in a growing number of newsrooms
that are generating and delivering news content across more than one media platform.
One key source estimates 100 news markets in the US (and Canada) where at least a
minimum of multi-platform news sharing is occurring. The two most common forms
of convergent partnerships are between print newspapers and their web sites and
between newspapers and television stations.
There is a noticeable disjunction between the expansive theorizing about newsroom
convergence and the actual scope of current practice. No major newsroom has
collapsed its multi-platform news staffs into a single staff, or established a singe focal
point for managing news across all platforms. Instead, the various staffs collaborate
tactically to achieve specific news goals.
4. 4
In general, the number of converged newsrooms engaged in sustained collective news
development, with ongoing cross-promotion, is relatively small, due to a combination
of factors:
o Lingering desire to preserve the integrity and centrality of existing platforms,
despite declining circulation and penetration rates.
o Perceived need to establish viable revenue models in advance to sustain
ongoing investments in new platforms, especially the Internet.
o Constraints of existing newsroom culture, including, in some cases, pressures
from labor unions.
Because of entrenched newsroom practices and cultures, some of the most innovative
convergent newsrooms are based outside the largest news markets, including:
o Small town papers such as the Hartsville Messenger, Bakersfield Union, and
the Lawrence Journal World. Many such experiments are being financed and
supported by the new media training centers, with additional foundation
support.
o A handful of media conglomerates operating primarily in mid-sized news
markets, including the Tribune Company (35 combined properties), Gannett
(89 newsrooms), and Media General (6 combined properties).
Despite ongoing changes in newsroom practice, media analysts are still sharply at
odds over the merits of convergence:
o Critics worry that 24-7 news reporting and expanded partnerships with
broadcast will reduce the scope for in-depth news reporting, force journalists to
work longer and harder for the same pay, and generally undermine the quality
of the news, further alienating the prospective news consumer. What little
research is available suggests that these concerns may be somewhat
overblown.
o Supporters, on the other hand, fear that convergence may fail because its scope
is too limited. Newspapers, for example, need to develop their websites with
more Web-only news content, and should expand the quality, scope and
purpose of their web casts.
o In addition, news organizations need to find more creative ways to respond to
escalating consumer demands for an interactive role in the production and
sharing of news and lifestyle information that is most relevant to their daily
lives. Embracing local experiments in community-based reporting is a start
– but may only scratch the surface of the broader re-thinking now required.
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“NEWSROOM OF THE FUTURE”
Literature Review
INTRODUCTION
The concept of the “Newsroom of the Future” (NOTF) has gained currency in recent years as
news organizations find themselves challenged to provide media audiences with round-the-
clock access to news and information at the same time that more and more consumers are
turning away from the established media in favor of information gleaned through the Internet.
With declining circulation and penetration rates, TV and radio broadcasters and newspapers
are under growing pressure to develop new sources of advertising revenue – including huge
revenues potentially available from selling ad space on the Web. In addition, the advent of
digital technology has made it possible to shift news content rapidly from one media platform
to another, while the easing of restrictions on cross-platform media ownership has facilitated
the concentration of ownership in local news markets. All of these pressures and
opportunities have led news managers to ask whether news-gathering and reporting staffs
assigned to different media platforms could be creatively combined to improve their
collective story-telling ability and better respond to consumer demand while generating higher
profits for media companies.
As this brief survey report makes clear, the media industry is still debating how to translate its
impressive convergence potential into day-to-day newsroom practice. While most media
analysts and a growing number of scholars are promoting convergence as a solution to many
of the industry’s current problems, many industry critics fear that convergence does not really
address the sources of consumer discontent, and worse, will end up cheapening the quality of
news reporting, undermine the craft of journalism, and further erode public allegiance and
support for the established media.
This review summarizes the main themes and sub-themes that have emerged in industry and
scholarly debate over NOTF. It also includes detailed information on the state-of-the-art, best
practices found in actual “converged” newsrooms across the United States. It is written
primarily for news practitioners, but also addresses some of the larger news policy themes and
controversies that have arisen among scholars and media owners concerned about
convergence’s long-term impact on the industry.
Part 1 looks briefly at the origins of the media convergence discussions, which began in
earnest nearly two decades ago, and briefly analyzes why the issue has gained greater saliency
and urgency in recent years.
Part 2, in some ways the heart of the review, attempts to catalog and synthesize in brief the
array of convergent media practices one finds in contemporary newsrooms, broken down by
the major media platforms involved.
6. 6
Part 3 reviews some of the issues in dispute between supporters and opponents of
convergence. As we shall see, while the debate has been cast in very broad, even polemical,
terms, many of the issues involved look somewhat different from the standpoint of daily news
reporting.
Part 4 concludes with a general assessment of where the convergence trend stands, and where
it might be going, including some reflections on the overall quality of the news media’s
response to the current challenge.
Sources for this review include books written by leading media scholars and analysts, feature
articles and opinion pieces in the major newspapers and industry magazines, conference
papers and speeches, and ongoing submissions to Web-based newsletters, columns, and
discussion groups. All of the data collection was conducted online, during November-
December 2006, using either Google/Yahoo search engines, or through Lexis-Nexis.
An annotated review of the source materials consulted for this report is attached as an
Appendix.
PART ONE: CONVERGENCE - WHY NOW?
As numerous books and articles make clear, the topic of “media convergence” is far from
new.1
In fact, debates over how converging technologies and shifting consumer demands
could affect – or should affect - media practices have been raging for over two decades.
However, as one source notes, convergence is “no longer the subject of armchair discussions,
but rather the result of real-world experimentation and active research into supporting
technologies…Convergence is being written into the business models of forward-thinking
newsgathering organizations, as well as software vendors and trade organizations that serve
them.”2
What, then, has changed?
A number of trends have brought convergence issues into sharper focus in recent years:
First, a marked trend toward corporate concentration, including large-scale mergers
in the communications industry. This trend is driven primarily by business
imperatives, rather than a response to specific consumer demands. Most notable in
this area was the Time-Warner merger in the late 1990s followed quickly by AOL’s
acquisition of the merged properties in 2001. For the first time ever, major content
suppliers and delivery systems covering all the major news-related media (print,
television, cable, and Internet) coalesced into a single ownership structure. This trend
has intensified in recent years, affecting more and more media properties specifically
devoted to news communications.3
1
See, for example, Rich Gordon, “Convergence Defined,” in Kevin Kawamoto & Rich Gordon, eds., Digital
Journalism and the Changing Horizons of Journalism, Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.
2
W. Eric Schult, “The Bears and Bulls of Convergence Technology,” TechNews, 8, 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2002), p.1.
3
Convergence critics have attacked growing media concentration as a threat to news quality. See Edward
Wasserman, “Is ‘Convergence’ the Next Media Disaster?” Miami Herald, May 15, 2006. For a trenchant
7. 7
Second, the newly permissive legal environment afforded by changes in FCC
regulations regarding media ownership in local markets.4
For years, the FCC
prohibited owners of one type of media, for example, a newspaper company, from
acquiring a company in another type media, for example, a television station, and
operating as a single news supplier. In the past, waivers were sometimes granted, and
some companies, like the Chicago-based Tribune Company, were able to own both a
newspaper (Chicago Tribune) and a local television station (WGN-TV). However,
until recently, ownership convergence did not translate into operational convergence:
the Tribune newspaper and the TV station were entirely separate organizations,
operating in the same geographic market, but in mutually exclusive news
environments.
A third critical factor has been the rise of digital technologies and the impact these
technologies can have on all aspects of media communications. The advent of the
Internet is one of the most obvious aspects of this trend, but the shift from older analog
systems to digital system affects all aspects of what a traditional news organization
does, including how quickly it can collect, store, share and report the news, and the
number of platforms involved.5
As the quality and accessibility of advanced digital
communications grow, media organizations can provide better quality print, audio and
video in a multiplicity of contexts, and on increasing number of platforms, including
personal cells phone and media players. At the same time, ordinary consumers are
developing the capacity to function as independent broadcast outlets and information
sharing centers.
Fourth, a series of major news events and crises, including 9/11, and subsequent
terrorist incidents in Europe, have catalyzed the public’s interest in having round-the-
clock access to the news, with a heavy emphasis on breaking news and continuous
stream reporting that can be tapped or “grazed” at a time and place chosen by the
consumer. CNN and cable television first mined this consumer trend during the first
US war in Iraq, but now even established cable media are scrambling to catch up. As
Internet penetration grows, more and more consumers are bypassing even cable news
and accessing the same news either online, or by sharing news and information
through their portable media devices.
This broad combination of trends may be considered the facilitating factors that have pushed
media convergence and the NOTF issue to a “tipping point.” At the same time, not all factors
shaping current industry trends toward convergence are facilitative in nature. In fact, a
critique of this position, see Janet Kolozny, “Regulating the News,” The Christian Science Monitor, February 25,
2003.
4
See, for example, Dan Luzadder, “Future of Convergence Not Much Clearer Despite FCC Ruling,” Online
Journalism Review (USC Annenberg Center), June 12, 2003.
5
The trade journal Broadcasting and Cable tracks ongoing innovations in the technologies supporting
contemporary newsroom operations. See, for example, “More than Meets the Eye,” The Technology Comes of
Age,” September 19, 2005.
8. 8
number of inhibiting factors seem to be limiting what media companies and their news
organizations are prepared to do -- or at least, the pace at which they are prepared to do it.
These include:
Fear of failure. The Time Warner-AOL merger of 2001 was not an unalloyed
business success; all of the potential implications of the merger were not carefully
assessed, and the market developed in unexpected ways. As a result, many media
companies seem wary of “grand” experiments in convergence and want to take a wait
and see approach, preferring to make easier, more marginal changes in the most
obvious operational areas, without additional outlays. In 2005, Don Logan, a top
Time Warner executive, cautioned that future convergence strategies needed to answer
three key questions: whether the technology really works, whether the consumer
imperative is compelling, and whether a viable business model has been developed.
“If the technology works and the consumers like it, that doesn’t mean there is money
to be made – someone still has to pay for it,” he warned.6
Fear of the Internet. A key business model concern for news organizations in the
convergence era is how to generate new revenues from the Internet while preserving
as much as possible the revenues from print and broadcast. It is generally agreed that
news organizations committed a serious error by not charging for advertising space
when they first launched their websites. Since then, news organizations have debated
whether and how to charge consumers for general access to their news sites, but have
generally concluded that the nature of the Web, including active news competition
from Yahoo and Google, would make it impossible to impose a general fee for
browsing – though most websites now charge heavily for specific services, including
access to their news archives. Some major newspapers claim to be generating a
healthy profit from their news web sites, but their inability to establish “brand” loyalty
with their online visitors, has many news organizations running scared, limiting their
online investments.
Fear of the Consumer. Both fears just cited point to the news business’ more
generalized fear of the media consumer, especially the young consumers who are
driving some, but not all, of the latest trends. Many youth are not only turning away
from television news and newspapers, but they are also turning away from news in
general, even news available online. Moreover, with so many organizations and
platforms available to deliver news content, there is growing evidence that established
news markets are becoming “saturated,” and that consumers may be suffering from a
“news fatigue” that discourages their in-depth involvement with the news. News
organizations worry that media applications are changing so rapidly - and that
consumer tastes are now so fickle – that it is nearly impossible to plan and budget for
sustainable long-term news programming.
6
Don Logan, “Lessons from Time Warner,” the closing keynote speech to the Accenture Global Convergence
Forum, Orlando, FL, April 13, 2005.
9. 9
PART TWO: SCOPE OF CURRENT PRACTICE
What makes for a convergent newsroom? For all the heady talk, only a small number of
newsrooms are engaged in planning, let alone implementing, the kind of far-reaching
structural or organizational changes that are envisioned in the most advanced theorizing about
the Newsroom of the Future.
Viewed schematically, there are three broad types of convergent practice currently operating
in the market:
Informal or Opportunistic Convergence. By far the most common form of
convergent newsroom practice, informal convergence is present in maybe 100 news
markets in the United States and Canada. In this form of practice, the news
organization is not seeking to implement a formal strategy and its newsroom structures
remain virtually unchanged. However, there is a selected sharing of news content and
personnel across platforms, incrementally, and largely on an ad hoc basis, when
specific targets of opportunity arise. Some of the newsrooms that have since moved
into more advanced forms of convergence started in the opportunistic mode, and built
up their newsroom operations over many years.
Tactical Convergence. Tactical convergence reflects a clear determination by a
news organization to generate and exploit multi-media content wherever and
whenever possible. Therefore, newsroom structure and news flow are modified to
allow different news managers and their staffs to share story ideas and to
collaborate on selected stories on a regular basis. Some print reporters and
photographers regularly produce content in different formats for presentation on more
than one platform. Multi-media news content is cross-promoted to gain maximum
exposure. In the advanced cases, a limited hybrid organizational structure is created to
coordinate some cross-platform activities. However, each news organization retains
control over its staff and its own news agenda.
Tactical convergent newsrooms are newsrooms with advanced convergent practices
but limited investments in new technologies and no formal cross-training of news
staffs. The news organization usually planned these changes after a period of
sustained internal review. All of the major national newspapers are developing
tactical convergent newsrooms, and in a number of local newspaper markets, some
highly innovative small-scale convergence experiments are also underway.
Convergence between print and broadcast operations is less common, but a handful of
media conglomerates, most notably Tribune Company and Media General, are
industry pioneers.
10. 10
Structural Convergence. More an ideal, than a fully realized practice, structural
convergence features a thorough integration of news production and reporting staffs
into a central operating system, with a single news management coordinator or
team. Newsplex, a multi-media training center housed at the University of South
Carolina, includes a mock “newsroom of the future” that promotes structural
convergent practices. However, no news organization currently manages all of its
news in this fashion, and only a few aspire to do so. In a handful of cases, where
media ownership is highly monopolized in a single market, some news coverage may
be managed from a single focal point and coordinated across all media platforms, and
in the process, each platform loses some of its autonomy. In addition, some multi-
market media conglomerates have acquired advanced communications technologies
that allow news managers based in one market to generate multi-media news content
for simultaneous distribution in the conglomerate’s other markets, with only limited
involvement by news managers there.
CONVERGED NEWSROOMS: PRINT-ONLINE
Newspapers typically deal with convergence in terms of how best to exploit their new
Internet sites to compensate for declining print circulation and penetration. Many
newspapers in smaller markets, for lack of resources, still treat the Web edition as simply the
“print edition online,” offering slightly re-edited print copy, and just a few added capabilities
– for example, news archiving and classifieds. The online edition appears after the print
edition, and plays no autonomous or major interactive role in the partnership.
By contrast, all of the major dailies, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los
Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today maintain semi-independent, and in
some cases separately owned, websites that serve as a 24-7 point of contact with their print
readers - and with increasing numbers of non-readers who access the site via search engines
(e.g. Yahoo). Each news website is managed by a dedicated (i.e. non-print) news staff that
posts its own content on the site, some of it exclusively for the site, some of it to be developed
in tandem with print reporters seeking to develop and expand the same stories.
Operationally, no news organization has actually integrated its entire print and online staff
into a single all-encompassing news staff. However, to promote and facilitate tactical
convergence – for both psychological and operational reasons - a number of papers have
moved their online staff onto the same floor or into the same physical newsroom space with
their print staff. Once there, cooperation in newsroom management and workflow tends to
occur in the following areas:
Joint Planning. Editors from the two platforms typically have one major summit meeting
daily to share story ideas and to implement convergent reporting. At the larger more affluent
papers, new technology has been acquired to facilitate instantaneous online communication
regarding daily news budgets and personnel assignments. Each editor can see the full array of
print and online resources potentially available to cover a story, and make suggestions to his
or her counterpart about how to exploit their resources jointly.
11. 11
Content Sharing. Print reporters may write a story for the main edition but still utilize the
online medium to post supporting documents and refer readers to other sources of useful
background information available online. Print photographers may be asked to develop an
entire photo collage or essay for posting on the newspaper’s web site. In this way, the online
medium can be used to amplify the print edition’s news coverage.
Continuous News. At the largest dailies, the two news staffs are also formally linked through
a special “continuous news desk.” The continuous news desk works round the clock to ensure
that breaking stories are quickly posted on the Web, then coordinates efforts to amplify and
develop the same story in the next morning’s print edition - while continuing to update and
expand the story online. The two platforms are exploited simultaneously, and sequentially, to
create a single evolving news story that can be tracked across one or more platforms.
Shared News Beats. In the most integrated convergence settings, for example at USA
Today, most of the specific beat reporters sit next to each in the same newsroom, and
collaborate in the coverage of their beat. Some papers also have designated “converged”
reporters, who regularly write copy for placement on both platforms. In most cases however,
print and online reporters still write for separate platforms, and only the continuous news desk
is heavily involved in both operations. In the least converged newsrooms, most online staff
largely functions as editors of the print and wire service content, and only a few senior
reporters or editors have the authority to post additional online content.
Training. In converged newsrooms where there is little cross-over reporting, reporters on
each platform are generally asked to acquire a basic understanding of the goals, needs, and
demands of other media. This allows them to begin developing some basic skills needed to
produce stories and visuals for other media. In some of the up-and-coming newsrooms, a core
group of reporters and photographers may be designated as responsible for educating and
training others in their specific area of expertise.
Columns. Some print reporters have special news columns or blogs posted on the paper’s
web site that may be more expansive and detailed than what they contribute to the print
edition. This is one way that papers attempt to “co-brand” the two media and attract print
readers to the web site. In cases where the online edition has emerged more fully from the
shadow of the print edition, a separate team of online columnists and bloggers may be in
place.
VIRTUES OF ONLINE AUTONOMY
Sources in the industry appear divided over whether a more integrated print-online newsroom
is desirable or even necessary. One of the reasons print and online staffs continue to retain
their autonomy is to ensure that the online team can develop Web-only content
unencumbered by print news priorities. For example, some of the major dailies are
increasingly using their websites to post audio-visual content (i.e. “webcasts”) that by its very
nature cannot appear in the print edition. Some are doing more than others.
12. 12
Washingtonpost.com, for example, routinely wins awards for its video journalism, even
beating out television news operations.7
Another distinction is between newspapers with a national reach vs. newspapers that are read
almost exclusively in local markets. Since 2004, Washingtonpost.com has been operating
two home pages: one that focuses on national news and one on local news. Which version
pops up on your computer screen depends on your zip code. For example, readers in
Spokane, WA who go to washingtonpost.com only get the national version.8
Another convergence trendsetter is USA Today, which is distinct from other major dailies
because it does not produce news in a local market and has long emphasized its visuals and
graphics. USA Today.com is placing less emphasis on breaking-news updates than on special
stories, imaginative packaging and Web-only features, including more and more video
produced at its new, on-site TV studio. News managers at USA Today.com refer to the need
for print and online journalists to develop “broadcast sensibilities,” i.e. understanding that
stories are constantly evolving, not permanent, and that visual presentation is often more
compelling than words.9
Ironically, USA Today is also in the forefront of efforts – steadfastly rejected elsewhere -
to converge print and online news staffs into a fully integrated staff under a single chain of
command. USA Today’s news managers say print-online autonomy was critical to their
converged newsroom’s evolution, but now that the online side has come into its own, it’s time
to bring the two back together. “The ultimate vision is that there are conversations about
content among everyone,” says a top online editor, “You’re not concerned about the platform.
You’re (only) concerned about how to tell the story.”10
CONVERGED NEWSROOMS: PRINT AND TV
While some degree of tactical newsroom convergence is present in the online operations of
nearly every major newspaper, the same cannot be said for the relationship between
newspapers and broadcast media, especially television. One obvious reason is that these two
entities have long co-existed, and fiercely competed, as the industry’s two independent news
“giants.” Each tends to be suspicious and jealous of the other’s ability to appeal to
prospective news consumers, and as a rule, each is separately owned.
7
Details about the Post’s online newsroom and its relation to the print newsroom can be found in Carla Savalli,
“The Future of the Newsroom: The Washington Post,” based on the author’s interviews and field observations in
November 2006. Savalli, senior editor for locals news at The Spokesman Review, writes a regular blog. For a
copy of her article, see www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/newsroom/archive/?postID=354. For more
background on the Post’s efforts to bolster its sagging circulation, see Rachel Smolkin, “Reversing the Slide,”
American Journalism Review, April 2005.
8
Carla Savalli, ibid.
9
Carl Sessions Stepp, “Center Stage,” American Journalism Review (online edition), April-May 2006, p.5.
10
Ibid., p.6.
13. 13
In the past, even when their facilities and operations were commonly owned, managers at
newspapers and television stations steadfastly resisted news and editorial collaboration. In
fact even today, with market pressures driving the two media together, active newsroom
partnerships between newspapers and broadcast entities are still relatively rare.
That said, in the few key markets where print-TV convergence is well underway, the extent
of newsroom collaboration is extremely far-reaching. Two of the biggest players in this new
arena are the Chicago-based Tribune Company, and the Richmond-based Media General.
Tribune owns 11 dailies, including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and the
Baltimore Sun, and 24 TV stations, including WPIX in New York and WTLA in Los
Angeles. Media General owns newspapers and television stations (and their respective
websites) in 6 media markets in the South, including Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Florida. Its flagship operation in Tampa, which features ongoing collaboration
between the Tampa Tribune, Tampa Bay Online, and WFLA-TV, is a leading convergence
pioneer.
KEY AREAS OF CONVERGENCE
Forest Carr, the news director at WFLA-TV, has provided a list of six different areas of
newsroom convergence in Tampa that apply more broadly to tactical convergence in a print-
TV setting.11
These include:
1. Daily tips and information. Assignment editors from different newsrooms have
regularly scheduled meetings and spur-of-the-moment conversations in which they share story
ideas and tips. Daily news budgets for each newsroom may be posted at a common site, or
emailed, and in some cases, decisions about daily story priorities are made jointly.
2. Spots news. Newspaper reporting staffs are generally quite large compared to a TV
station’s staff. Therefore, print reporters on the same beat can allow a TV station to provide
more detail and depth in its live reports from the scene of a news event. Print beat reporters
generally feed their reports to the TV newsroom, rather than appearing on-air themselves.
3. Photography. With limited additional training, visual reporting capabilities can often be
shared across media. For example, A TV station’s camera crews can carry still cameras,
while newspaper photographers can carry digital video cameras. “There’s no sense in
sending separate photographers to a ribbon-cutting if all the newspaper needs is a single shot
and all the TV station needs is 25 seconds of video,” Carr writes. In theory, using one crew
saves money without any loss in news quality.
4. Enterprise reporting. This is the area in which “convergence manifests itself most
powerfully,” Carr argues. He cites an example of a major local story first identified by the
WFLA-TV reporter that the reporter agreed to write for the Tribune, in collaboration with the
11
This section draws heavily from Forest Carr, “The Tampa Model of Convergence,” Poynter Online, May 2,
2002.
14. 14
print editor. The paper’s graphics department generated artwork for the newspaper that was
also used as the foundation for the graphics on WFLA. The Tribune broke the story, but with
the TV reporter’s by line, and a modified version was also posted online. A local radio station
gave major coverage to the story, crediting both the newspaper and the TV station. As Carr
notes: “This was more than one story presented in three places; it was one story presented
three different ways.” Media General’s TV ratings spiked 25% that day.
5. Franchises. WFLA and the Tribune also have a standing commitment to allow selected
contributors to one medium present their news content on the other. For example, the
Tribune’s religion reporter appears on WFLA once a week, and her TV segment also appears
the same day as her feature in the Tribune. Conversely, the WFLA consumer reporter writes
a weekly column for the Tribune – and appears regularly online, often with exclusive content.
6. Events. Coverage of major events such as the Super Bowl, Olympics and elections also
provide excellent opportunities to showcase joint coverage. In some cases, the two media will
cover an event jointly and cross-promote their coverage. However, relations are so close that
news reporters in one medium are sometimes called upon to provide coverage on both
platforms. For example, when the Tribune covered the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake
City, WFLA ran special segment every night with Olympic highlights and stories form the
Tribune reporter, who up linked video reports daily. The Tribune’s website staff then tied it
all together with a special set of Olympics pages providing a wide range of reporting and
statistics.
From a newsroom perspective, the Tampa convergence model is similar to convergent models
operating between many newspapers and their online staffs. While the Tribune and WFLA
are housed in a single building, each has its own floor. In addition, despite the creation of a
multi-media desk, coordinating their ongoing collaborations, each property still functions
totally independently of the other, covering and presenting whatever stories they choose, in
the manner deemed most suitable to their respective audiences.
THE TRIBUNE PRECEDENT
By contrast, at least some of the Tribune Company’s newsroom operations appear to go
substantially beyond the tactical convergence model.12
The Tribune has made an enormous investment in convergence technologies that allow the
company to interconnect all of its far-flung properties, not just in Chicago but throughout the
US. At the heart of this operation is the Tribune’s “mother” property, the Chicago Tribune
newspaper, which operates a three-camera TV studio that independently generates news and
other programming for ChicagoLand TV (CLTV). The newspaper’s multi-media editor
oversees the flow of news content throughout the Tribune system, including a “family wire
service” linking all 11 newspapers, and an “interoperable control system” that allows all of
12
Most of the material presented in this section is drawn from W. Eric Schult, “The Bears and Bulls of Media
Convergence,” TechNews, 8, 4, November-December 2002.
15. 15
the Tribune’s TV stations to utilize the Chicago’s Tribune’s TV studio - and manipulate its
TV cameras - using nothing more than a Web browser.
Another comparatively new technology that has helped Tribune properties share stories is
Asynchronous Transfer Mode, or ATM, a high-speed digital-communications network that
can eliminate rain fade and other transmission problems associated with simpler satellite
delivery. With ATM routers and video-encoding equipment, the company pays a premium of
20 percent above monthly charges for a 1.5 megabit T1 line but in return, its network
throughput increases thirty fold – fast enough to move four video signals simultaneously.
ATM can handle both real-time feeds and on-demand file transfer. One station can drag-and-
drop a digital video file in the MPEG2 format across the Tribune’s network to share it with
another media property. In addition, the increased mobility of streaming video helps the
company’s Internet sites offer visual storytelling to an extent that few others in the industry
can match.
The Tribune’s technological and networking capabilities have been described by one source
as “close to the ultimate in convergence.”
CONVERGED NEWSROOMS: OTHER SETTINGS
While the print-online and print-TV settings are the dominant newsroom convergence arenas,
several other types are worthy of mention in passing.
Multi-Media
One is the multi-media convergence setting, in which print, television, online, and even radio
staffs on separate properties share news content and collaborate across several platforms. A
number of the print-TV convergence cases noted above include a website component. For
example, in the Tampa-based collaboration between WFLA-TV and the Tampa Tribune,
TBO.com also plays a role. However, what typically happens in these cases is that the online
component plays more of a background role and most of the active collaboration occurs
between the print and the broadcast media.
This is hardly surprising: from a continuous 24-7 news perspective, the functions of broadcast
and online media overlap, and broadcast being the more highly visible player, it tends to
dominate the action. Moreover, the television station may have its own expanding web site,
and its print partners may be constrained from fully exploiting their own site as part of its
partnership agreement with the station. These constrains are less likely to appear – or appear
as major obstacles – in settings where all the local news assets are owned by single company.
Local Broadcast-Internet
Local radio stations generally operate their own web sites but not very many have devoted
significant resources to seriously exploiting their news programming convergence potential.
Numerous obstacles are cited in the literature. The most obvious one is the inherent conflict
16. 16
between the two platforms. Because radio is highly portable, and the Internet, generally
speaking, is not, convincing radio listeners to follow a story on the station’s site – as opposed
to another site, or the daily newspaper – can be stretch. Moreover, without a converged daily
newspaper present, there is no natural linkage between radio content and the Internet content
based on the written word. In the past, when radio stations posted actual news scripts, in the
hopes of capturing text-friendly web users, they bombed. Thus, unlike the print newspaper
websites, which are still relatively text-heavy, the success of commercial broadcast websites
depends on their ability to extend the radio experience online – with live streaming, backed
by additional news content not provided on-air, and with compelling archived programming
that users can download with ease.
Industry data suggests that most local radio and TV web sites are not profitable – in part,
because local banner ads provide too weak a revenue base. Presently, the websites are
generally utilized to extend the local station brand, to promote station programming, and
hopefully extend the station’s reach. Some innovative converged programming is underway
in selected locales.13
However, local newspaper web sites are more heavily staffed, with
nearly five times as many content-related employees and nearly three times as many sales-
related employees as the average TV web site. In addition, based on 2001 data, newspaper
web sites enjoyed six times the page views and between four and eight times the revenues as
TV web sites. The disparities between newspaper and radio websites are even greater.
Convergence between local television stations and the Internet is complicated by
technological, commercial, and legal concerns not found in radio. Many local stations cannot
broadcast cleanly over the Internet, and instead, have reached a partnership with the Yahoo-
owned Broadcast.Com to broadcast its locally originated programming. Television also has
copyright concerns. For example, because of objections from CBS, Broadcast.com is unable
to show newscasts that involve highlights from NCAA tournament games. This kind of
limitation makes it difficult for television sites to offer even comparable coverage, either live
or stored, to what the consumer can find on the regular broadcast.
Despite these current limitations, many industry observers see a broadcast-Internet
convergence “explosion” just around the corner. Thanks to revised FCC guidelines, radio
local radio stations are permitted to broadcast well beyond their local markets. As a result,
some of the most innovative radio stations have developed interest-area news programming
(e.g. technology news) that can be simulcast to other local markets, and co-branded with the
same interest-area content online. While locally owned and generated, the station’s news is
no longer local in scope – but now reaches a national and even global audience. “We use a
geography of the mind, not a geography of where you live,” says the program director of
CNET in the Bay Area - a pioneer in the new niche-based, radio news movement.
Even more far-reaching, potentially, are the expected changes in technology that will
invariably bring radio and the Internet closer together. Cell phones and media players are
rapidly evolving to the point where consumers will one day be able to readily access TV/radio
13
See the lengthy report of the Radio-Television News Directors Association and Foundation, Local Web News:
Case Study of Nine Local Broadcast Internet News Operations, which highlights the web operations of 9 local
TV or radio stations. Though dated (2001), the report is still the single best source of information on the scope
of local broadcast web convergence in the areas of content, marketing and advertising.
17. 17
and the Internet on the same portable platform, especially with major planned expansions of
Wi-Fi access beyond the current 300 foot limit. Once this happens, Internet radio could easily
become a major medium of choice for audio-delivered news.14
Network TV-Internet
Major television networks with their own websites can surmount some of the revenue
problems facing local TV stations because neither their audience nor their advertising base is
local. However, without the local market connection, networks generally use their sites
simply to supplement their television content. Until recently, viewers would visit a network
site primarily to find out about their favorite shows, follow up news stories, check out
programming schedules, or in some cases (e.g. CBS.com), to purchase special products. It
was thought to be self-defeating to broadcast network programming over the Internet because
it would take business away from the affiliates.
In fact, a number of the TV broadcast companies have recently taken some important steps
forward in the direction of web casting their programs. In August CBS announced that its
evening news program with Katie Couric would be simulcast online – a TV industry first.15
CBS also has plans to allow some of its non-news programming to be broadcast available
online, and according to industry sources, will also develop new programming unique to the
Internet – another first.16
Fox will allow previously aired TV episodes to be downloaded free
at its recently acquired website, myspace.com. In addition, Yahoo will make selected
Showtime segments available for free and is partnering with the NFL to offer the first live
web casts of NFL games - but only for viewers who are outside the US (thus, side-stepping
the domestic black out issue), and for a $25 fee.17
Despite these breakthroughs, the networks are extremely concerned to ensure that their
expensive programming is not simply captured by the Internet, especially by sites outside
their control. A brief storm was created when the popular website YouTube.com began to
rebroadcast pirated video excerpts from the networks’ late night TV talk shows – a clear
example of how consumer demands for greater interactivity from the Web, and the
established media’s own commercial interests, do not necessarily coincide. Similarly,
webcasting major sports events to US-based Internet users – even in the form of
downloadable rebroadcasts - threatens to violate existing “black out” rules. There are also
explicit copyright restrictions on some major sporting events, including NCAA tournament
games. Newscasts presented on network and local station websites are prohibited from
including audio or visual highlights from these games. Since consumers seek access to the
web to extend their appreciation of the regular broadcast content – not to receive even less
14
A good source of daily news and commentary on the latest developments in commercial radio-Internet
convergence is the website/blob of the Radio and Internet Network, or RAIN, managed by industry analyst Kurt
Hanson at www.kurthanson.com. Hanson believes that the radio broadcast industry has become overly
preoccupied with digital radio at the expense of Internet-based radio, which he believes has greater long-term
potential commercially.
15
Statement by CBS News and Sports president Sean McManus.
16
Robin Hohman, “Fox on Demand to Offer Fall Series Episodes Online,” TechNews World, October 4, 2006.
17
Ibid.
18. 18
content – restrictions of this kind tend to put a damper on their enthusiasm for the Internet as a
broadcast medium.
A final issue concerns advertiser “right-of-way” on converged broadcast-Internet platforms.
A TV ad featuring one product (e.g. Coke) could easily clash with a web site banner ad
featuring that product’s major competitor (e.g. Pepsi). This could apply to live programming,
but also to the much larger volume of stored or delayed programming that includes the
original advertising, or new advertising attached specifically to the rebroadcast. Vagueness in
the rules governing ad traffic in the converged setting is still an impediment for some major
advertisers.
Public TV-Public Radio
One of the rarest convergence settings is one in which a public television and a public radio
broadcaster come together to develop converged news content. In 2002, a radio and
television station based at the university of Michigan and serving the entire region of eastern
Michigan came together to form Michigan Public Media.18
The two entities now have a
single general manager and program director, but despite the convergence, the TV station
remains headquartered in Flint and the radio is still based in Ann Arbor. The convergence
plan calls for a much greater emphasis on “developing original programming with a local flair
that may also be of interest to public radio and TV audiences across the country.”
In 2003, Ball State University established Indiana News Link, staffed by 20 students and 4
full time professional journalists to develop converged TV-public radio news content for
audiences in Eastern Indiana. Graduates of this project are competitively positioned to step
into multi-media reporting and production roles in what is expected to be a more
convergence-oriented job market in the coming years.19
Despite these important precedents, few other public news entities have attempted to follow
suit. Presently, public media convergence experiments are restricted to university settings,
and to highly localized news markets. Their relevance and adaptability to larger and more
highly commercialized news settings remains unexplored – and unknown.
PART THREE: ISSUES IN DISPUTE
There is considerable discussion in the literature as to whether existing convergence models
are going too far – or not far enough. Critics outside the public media environment have
tended to view the entire convergence movement as a business strategy to achieve economies
of scale, improve efficiency, and realize higher profits -- rather than as a sincere attempt to
modernize journalism or to respond to consumer needs.20
18
See Julie Peterson, “U-M Radio and Television Stations Merge,” The University Record, June 17, 2002.
19
For background on NewsLink Indiana, see: www.bsu.edu/web/medineen/Newslink.html. Its website is
http://www.newslinkindiana.com.
20
A compelling, if highly polemical, presentation of the anti-convergence argument is Edward Wasserman, “Is
Convergence the Next Media Disaster?” Miami Herald, May 15, 2006. See also Don Corrigan, “Convergence
Works for Media Owner but Not News Consumer,” St. Louis Journalism Review, November 2004.
19. 19
Those who worry about the convergent agenda raise several key concerns:
News quality
Critics fear that growing convergence will degrade the overall depth and quality of news
reporting. For example, developing more in-depth features in the print edition will become
less important as simply staying on top of the story on a 24-7 basis overshadows all else.
Likewise, in a print-broadcast partnership, broadcast tends to dominate print, because nearly
all broadcast stories can be translated into print stories, but not every print story has broadcast
potential. Broadcasters organizations have fewer field reporters and are often portrayed as
less committed to examining topics in-depth.
There is also a fear that with increased emphasis on reporting speed, reporting accuracy will
suffer. If overall news quality declines, say critics, public trust and confidence in the
newspaper and its brand will erode even further.
Effect on Journalists.
Critics also fear that converging newsrooms will harm working journalists by forcing them to
work harder and longer to produce copy in more than one medium. In addition, convergence
will erode specialization in one medium, leading to an emphasis on cross-trained or
“converged” journalists who do not actually understand the depth of issues involved in
reporting in each medium. In the short term, highly specialized journalists will suffer lay-
offs, and those who remain will suffer confusion and a loss of morale.
Summary
Convergence in print-online setting does pose special editorial challenges. Most feature Web
content is formally vetted before it goes online, but there are typically far fewer editors
available for the online edition, so the potential for error is greater. One editor at the Houston
Chronicle noted that while print stories typically have 5 editors, an online story may have 2.21
In addition, blurbs, headlines and short items may not be vetted at all before being posted.
That said, critics sometimes forget a key editorial difference: while print errors last forever,
online errors can be corrected quickly - and erased forever. As the evidence suggests, they
usually are - though not necessarily right away.
Convergence supporters also note that the availability of the online edition can actually free
up the print reporter to go into a story more in-depth, because the breaking and continuous
news aspects are now covered by the online reporter. The print reporter is also available to
backstop the online reporter, to ensure that the story’s background and larger context helps
inform the online version. Thus far, it appears that convergence has the potential to expand
the range and depth of story telling, rather than standardize or cheapen overall news quality.
21
Carl Sessions Stepp, “Center Stage,” American Journalism Review, April-May 2006.
20. 20
The effect on journalists as working journalists is not altogether clear. In the short term,
there is an increased work load for some journalists, some of it fairly substantial, and this is
not always welcomed, either by their unions, or by the working journalists themselves. For
example, in November 2006, the Wall Street Journal’s union declared that its journalists
would no longer conduct webcast and podcast interviews or appear on-air to discuss their
stories - two key convergence activities - unless they were properly compensated.22
The
Washington Post has also encountered journalist discontent when it was revealed that some
staffers writing blogs for the paper’s website were not compensated, while others were.23
Not all journalists object to their added responsibilities, however. For example, at some
newspapers, print journalists frequently get a byline for a story published online, which
increases their exposure from thousands to millions of readers – a major perk. In addition,
publishing your own blog can increases your standing and status in the industry – and also
expand your following. Many journalists say they enjoy these benefits, as long as the added
work can be conducted flexibly and the additional time commitment is “within reason.”
PRINT-ONLINE CONVERGENCE - TOO TIMID?
Against those who fear the print-online convergence may go too far, a growing number of
voices feel that newspapers have not done nearly enough to exploit their latent synergies with
their websites and with related Internet-based applications.
Webcasting
The biggest complaint is that newspapers are still too word-oriented. While some major
papers like the Washington Post and The New York Times now regularly feature video clips
on their web sites, their venture into web casting, including both video and audio is still fairly
limited.
Writing in Editor and publisher’s online journal, one industry analyst recently noted: “[T]ake
a look at the homepages of most newspaper websites circa late 2006. While you’ll find some
with video, the entry points to most such sites remain text-and-photo dominated…Newspaper
sites should be making their homepages a healthy mix of text, still images, video and audio.
They should be walking the walk, and not just talking it, by offering online users a true multi-
media experience.”24
A related view is offered in an article published in the Online Journalism Review, based on a
careful study of newspaper websites that last year won major design awards at the Online
Journalism Awards, EPpys, and Edgies. The author’s analysis suggested that few newspapers
were actually writing important new stories for placement on their websites but were still
largely adapting existing material from adjunct newspaper, television or radio content.
22
The Editors Weblog, “New Media,” November 17, 2006. (www.editorsweblog.org/news/2006/11).
23
Ibid.
24
Steve Outing, “Grading Newspapers’ Website Progress: B-,” Editor and Publisher, November 27, 2006.
21. 21
Almost all sites include some avenues for interactivity, video, audio, and search, the article
found, but despite these obvious “bells and whistles,” the sites don’t actually focus on writing
for the newer medium. On the best sites, you essentially have jazzier versions of the offline
stories, with added multi-media pizzazz.25
This critique lends some credence to the notion that while news accuracy may not be suffering
due to convergence, overall news quality invariably will – unless newspapers invest more in
their online news staffs, and allow expanded online capabilities drive the convergence
partnership.
“Citizen” Journalism (“Cit-J”)
Another area of growth for print-online convergence is the development of community-based
channels – including additional local websites - that enhance the news organization’s own
professional reporting with reporting and commentary from so-called “citizen” journalists.
Some of these newspaper-supported platforms also allow users to exchange community news
and information with each other.
Citizen journalists include highly educated and often influential “bloggers” with genuine
expertise in a particular field, who police the mainstream media and often fancy themselves as
unofficial media watchdogs – or even authoritative, alternative sources of reporting that can
either force the professional journalists to focus on neglected stories or whose own stories and
columns can be cited independently. However, in addition to the established bloggers, some
news organizations have sought to incorporate far less sophisticated and even circumstantial
reporters who by their very nature are close to the scene of breaking events or intimately
involved with sources shaping these events.
Until recently, these “Cit-J” experiments, probably a half dozen total, remained highly
localized and confined to smaller communities and newspapers with very limited reporting
staffs. Leading examples include the Bakersfield Californian, with its affiliated website,
Bakersfield.com, and affiliated biweekly tabloid, Northwest Voice, and the Hartsville
Messenger, with its affiliated Hartsville Today.com. In addition to finding ways of
projecting existing media out to non-reading literate consumers, all of these ventures were
started with the aim of capitalizing upon existing consumer social networking activity via the
Internet to create a new pole of attraction for advertisers.26
In fact, while the Northwest Voice itself is a full-fledged tabloid and online paper driven
entirely by contributions from unpaid users, some of the affiliated sites function less as news
outlets than as broader information-sharing sites, much like the social networking through My
Space, but with a stronger commercial and marketing angle.
25
Erin Robinson, “Online News Sites Score More with Flash than Substance,” Online Journalism Review
(undated). Click on: www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1059512490.php.
26
See Mack Reed, “Online Media’s ‘Californian’ Adventure,” Online Journalism Review, August 8, 2006;
Douglas Fisher & Graham Osteen, Hartsville Today: The First Year of a Small-Town Citizen-Journalism Site,
Hartsville Messenger, 2006 (available online at www.HartsvilleMessener.com);
22. 22
Industry experts expect the scope of citizen and participatory journalism to shift dramatically
in the years ahead. Perhaps no clearer sign of this was the decision in November 2006 by the
Gannett newspaper chain to expand the scope of print-online convergence in all 89 of its
newsrooms nationwide, a process to be completed by May 2007.27
As part of its dramatic
expansion, Gannett has mandated that all of its newsrooms develop mechanisms for what
Gannett calls “crowd-sourcing,” or increased reliance on non-professional journalists as
sources of audio-visual and print content for stories in local communities. A concept that
previously existed on the margins of the industry is about to become a systemic part of the
way some news organizations do business.
PART FOUR: SUMMARY REFLECTIONS
A review of the literature on NOTF as well as the range of contemporary converged
newsroom practices suggests some summary reflections on where the trend stands – and
where it may be going.
The vast majority of converged newsroom experiences involve a newspaper and its
website or a newspaper and a television station. This is because the newspaper and
television industries are the ones most concerned about declining penetration and
circulation rates - and the news organs with the most to lose. However, just as these
news organs are fearful of current trends, they also remain fearful of where the market
is heading. For this reason, most but not all news organizations have adopted a fairly
cautious and piecemeal approach to convergence, testing out a range of new reporting
practices, creating limited hybrid structures --- in effect, changing without completely
changing, until what is happening in the market becomes clearer.
Despite their entrenched nature, existing newsroom “culture” and rivalries between
different platforms and their reporters do not appear to be as significant an obstacle as
some observers fear. These pressures do exist, and in some cases, when the unions
become involved, the move toward a converged newsroom is slowed. However, most
of the leading cases suggest that a strong management vision in support of
converged newsrooms tends over time to overcome major internal opposition. One
reason is that while converged newsrooms impose new demands on journalists, they
also offer fresh rewards. As one television reporter commented: “You can really
teeter on the edge of saying, “’I’m not enjoying this, and it’s not fair’ to realizing
‘This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done’.”28
27
See, for example, Oon Yeoh, “Internet Time: Crowdsourcing the News,” The Edge (Malaysia), November 13,
2006. A six-page guidance memo from CEO Craig Dubow describing the initiative is available at:
http://www.citybeat.com/2006-11-29/gannett_plan.pdf. Various blog sites that track citizen journalism
development have reacted to Gannett’s initiative. For a discussion of the Ft. Myers Press experience, which
helped spur Gannett’s decision, see: http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/2006/11/the_new_investi.html.
28
Timothy O’Brien, “The Newspaper of the Future,” The New York Times, June 26, 2005.
23. 23
Without expansive and forward-looking thinking at the senior executive level, many
converging organizations still cling to the atavistic hope that shrinking audiences
might grow again, if only a new operational environment is created and the right
marketing mix is found. The evidence suggests that most major dailies still conceive
of their websites as a means of extending their print brand - thereby demonstrating to
advertisers that combined circulation rates are growing, not declining – rather than a
bold new step in the direction of interactive media. Similarly, when print and
television stations converge, often their main motive is to cross-promote their separate
brands, so that audiences of one medium are driven to consume more of the other, and
vice versa. The underlying hope, never quite explicitly stated, is that limited
incremental innovation alone might recapture “wayward” news consumers and
allow the troubled news media to regain its lost glory.
Unfortunately, at present, available evidence regarding the impact of convergent
newsroom practices on revenues and consumer behavior is sparse – and mixed. Some
of the major daily newspaper web sites are indeed profitable, but the vast majority of
visitors arrive at these sites via search engines and their brand “loyalty” is highly
suspect. Likewise, converged print-TV operations often experience daily ratings
“spikes,” but it’s not clear if the converged reporting, or simply the story itself, is
responsible. Independent, comprehensive research into the effects of converged news
organizations and newsrooms on ad revenues, audience ratings, brand loyalty, and a
range of consumer attitudes and habits is still sorely lacking.
Not everyone in the convergence discussion views the contemporary challenge to the
news industry in terms of operational changes to newsrooms, be they limited or far-
reaching. In fact, a growing current of opinion, drawing on the remarkable successes
of media companies in a number of smaller news markets, has suggested that
convergence alone will not “fix” the industry’s current problems because the
consumer is not simply seeking better access to more diversified news products on a
range of media platforms. Rather, news consumers are increasingly intent on
becoming participants in the production and reporting of the news but also in the
wider use of interactive platforms to create a public identity, establish a sense of
community, research products and ideas, share information, and police established
institutions.29
So far, the most innovative experiments in community-driven news and information –
for example, the constellation of newspapers, online services and software products
promoted by the Bakersfield Californian, or the multi-media monopoly established by
the Journal-World Company in Lawrence, KS – have occurred in small markets with
highly unusual characteristics. These local cases are pregnant with ideas about how to
transform the news business and news companies into more wide-ranging information
29
Jan Schaffer, former business editor and Pulitzer prize winner for the Philadelphia Inquirer, is executive
director of J-Lab, a citizens journalism think tank and funding agency. For a forceful critique of media
convergence from a “Cit-J” perspective, see “Convergent Audiences: When Consumers Are Creators,” a speech
delivered to the BEA annual convention in Las Vegas, NV, April 18, 2004 (available online at www.j-
lab.org.schaffer041804.shtml).
24. 24
companies. However, given their local peculiarities, the relevance of these
experiments for larger markets is unclear.30
In conclusion, the convergence discussion appears to have reached an unstable middle
ground. For some news organizations - essentially the early adopters - the “tipping” point has
already occurred. They’ve taken their heads out of the sand, and committed themselves to
building new media partnerships and to implementing a range of tactical innovations at the
operational level in their newsrooms. They are waiting to see if these new measures are
successful, and what happens in the broader market, before investing in new technologies and
making additional changes.
For another group of news organizations – the innovators - a second “tipping “point is already
appearing on the horizon. These innovators see a consumer whose vision of news and
information in the digital age is racing far beyond the existing paradigms of the news industry
- and they wonder how traditional news organizations will ever “catch up.” Some research
and training organizations like Newsplex, have suggested that a highly centralized “super-
newsroom” with the ability to pass news and information almost instantaneously from one
platform to the other, with local citizens fully incorporated into the news loop, would respond
to existing consumer demands, at least during crises and major national and local news
events.31
However, for those steeped in the latest interactive media experiments, the question
could just as well be posed: Is the “newsroom of the future” even a newsroom?
30
The Lawrence Journal –World case is unique because all print and broadcast properties in Lawrence, KS are
owned by a single family firm, The World Company, with deep local roots, and a pioneering founder. For a
detailed profile, see Timothy L. O’Brien, “The Newspaper of the Future,” New York Times, June 26, 2005.
31
Newsplex, a media convergence training center housed at the University of South Carolina, is the US affiliate
of Ifra, a global media consortium sponsoring similar centers in Europe and Latin America. See
http://www.newsplex.org/mission/index.shtml. For background on Newsplex and other US media training
centers, consult the Appendix to this report.
26. 26
BLOGS
Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins
www.henryjenkins.org
Henry Jenkins, the Director of MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, blogs on media
convergence, participatory culture and collective intelligence, expanding these concepts from
his recently-released book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Feeds
are available.
Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (C3)
www.convergenceculture.org/weblog
Partnership between thinkers and researchers affiliated with the Comparative Media Studies
program at MIT and companies interested in convergence. C3 frequently updates a blog on
convergence, focusing on three core concepts of transmedia entertainment, participatory
culture and experiential marketing. Sam Ford, a Masters of Science candidate in Comparative
Media Studies at MIT and Henry Jenkins, the Director of the MIT Comparative Media
Studies Program blog most frequently. Feeds are available.
Corante Media Hub
www.media.corante.com
Calling itself a “starting point for keeping abreast of the best writing and thinking on the
media industry,” the Corante Media Hub brings together the blogosphere’s most respected
writers of various fields. Including editorial and network posts, the Corante Media Hub
provides a sort of one-stop shopping for getting a variety of observations on the “radical
forces reshaping the media landscape.” For a complete list of contributors, visit
http://media.corante.com/bios.php. Posts can be received through an RSS feed, via email or
in a weekly “best of” email.
Cyberjounalist.net
http://www.cyberjournalist.net/
This extensive site is written, edited and published by Jonathan Dube in partnership with the
Online News Association. This site has several unique features including a Great Works
Gallery, highlighting examples of excellence in online journalism, a Weblog Blog, focusing on
the influence of blogs on journalism and the J-Bloggers: CyberJournalist List of weblogs
written by journalists, called "the most comprehensive list of blogs produced by journalists"
by Nieman Reports. The site also includes Top Headlines, Citizen Media Monitor,
Convergence Chronicle and Business Bytes sections. Subscription methods include email and
RSS feeds.
Editors Weblog
http://www.editorsweblog.org/
This site was launched by the World Editors Forum with the goal of providing a “unique
rendezvous point” for editors and senior news executives to discuss and be informed of new
media issues and their effects on journalism. This blog is divided into a News section and an
Analysis section. Topics in the News section include editorial quality, newsroom
management, citizen journalism, print and online convergence and anything else related to
27. 27
“the newspaper renaissance.” The Analysis section features more in-depth posts including
personal views. Posts can also be divided into categories such as citizen journalism,
multimedia convergence or ethics to pinpoint your specific interests. RSS feeds are also
provided.
E-Media Tidbits
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31
E-Media Tidbits, through Poynter Online, is a group weblog focused on online
media/journalism/publishing. Updated daily, this blog features short blurbs, “tidbits” if you
will, on current happenings in the industry. Posts are available through RSS feeds and daily
e-mail newsletters.
MediaShift
www.pbs.org/mediashift/
A self-proclaimed “guide to the digital media revolution,” MediaShift tracks new media
(including blogs, podcasts, citizen journalism, wikis, news aggregators, etc) and their impact
on society and culture. More nifty features are “The Week’s Top 5: People, Trends, and Tech
on our Radar” which highlights recent happenings and “Your Take” which encourages
readers to respond with their response to an important media-shifting question of the week.
Janet Kolodzy
http://urge2converge.blogs.com
This blog by Prof. Janet Kolodzy is intended as a companion guide to the author’s book,
Convergence Journalism: Writing and Reporting Across the New Media. It offers detailed
convergence journalism exercises for students and professionals, as well as links to other
blogs.
Vincent Maher – Media in Transition
http://nml.ru.ac.za/maher/
This blog by Vincent Maher, the head of the New Media Lab at Rhodes University, South
Africa, discusses media convergence with an emphasis on blogging and citizen journalism.
Feeds are available.
ONLINE NEWSLETTERS
WWW.JOUR.SC.EDU/NEWS/CONVERGENCE. The web site of the 6-year old monthly
Convergence Newsletter, probably the single best source of academic and news practitioner
debate about contemporary media convergence trends and their implications for journalism
quality and consumer media satisfaction. The newsletter, based at the University of South
Carolina, home of Newsplex (see below), and founded by Prof. Augie Grant, also reports on
upcoming scholarly conferences and books dealing with convergence issues. Among its many
useful (typically short) articles, see, for example, “Emerge, Don’t Converge,”
http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/convergence/v4no2.html.
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WWW.POYNTER.ORG. The website of PoynterOnline, one of the leading online sources of
news and views on contemporary trends in US journalism. Affiliated with the Florida-based
Poynter Institute, a journalism training center founded in 1975 by the former editor of the St.
Petersburg Times. The website features staff columns and public fora for debate on key
topics, newsletter articles, industry news items, and career search information. Search
engine will take you to past articles on media convergence developments at national and local
media.
WWW.OJR.ORG. Online Journalism Review newsletter published under the auspices of the
Annenberg Center for Communications at USC. This is an excellent source of feature-length
articles on the history and background of the media convergence trend, as well as current
developments in the industry. See, for example, “Convergence Defined,” a 16-page article,
published in November 2003. http://www.ojr.org/ojr/business/1068686368.php.
WWW.TECHNEWSWORLD.COM. Newslettter published by ECT News Network, one of the
largest e-business and technology news publishers in the United States (originally e-
Commerce Times, founded in October 1998). The site includes a separate archive of articles
on “media convergence” from a business and technology perspective. See, for example,
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/53445.html on the decision by News Corp.-owned
Fox to use the Internet as an outlet for television programming.
WWW.KURTHANSON.COM. The website of the Radio and Internet Network (RAIN), an
online newsletter with daily news and commentary on the latest developments in commercial
radio-Internet convergence. The site includes a list of upcoming conferences, and two major
archived feature series written by publisher Kurt Hanson on the future of Internet-based
radio broadcasting and advertising. RAIN believes that the broadcast industry is
underestimating the commercial potential of Internet-based radio, which it describes as a
classic “disruptive technology.”
BOOKS
John V. Pavlik. Journalism and New Media, Columbia University Press, 2001
Pavlik argues that the new media can revitalize news gathering and reengage an
increasingly distrustful and alienated citizenry. He considers the implications of
convergence and the emerging tools of the information age – and speculates on their
likely adoption, evolution, and impact on news and society in the 21st century,
examining both the positive and negative forces that will shape the face of journalism
in the digital age. With a foreword by Seymour Topping, this book is a valuable
reference on everything from organizing a new age newsroom to job hunting in the
new media.
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Henry Jenkins, Where Old and New Media Collide, New York: NYU Press, 2006
Henry Jenkins, founder and director of MIT's comparative media studies program,
debunks outdated ideas of the digital revolution in this remarkable book, proving that
new media will not simply replace old media, but rather will learn to interact with it in
a complex relationship he calls "convergence culture." The book's goal is to explain
how convergence is currently impacting the relationship among media audiences,
producers and content. As Jenkins says, "there will be no magical black box that puts
everything in order again."
Jenkins takes pains to prove that the notion of convergence culture is not primarily a
technological revolution; through a number of well-chosen examples, Jenkins shows
that it is more a cultural shift, dependent on the active participation of consumers
working in a social dynamic. He references recent media franchises like Survivor, The
Matrix, and American Idol to show how the new participatory culture of consumers
can be utilized for popular success and increased exposure.
Janet Kolodzy (Emerson University). Convergence Journalism: Writing and Reporting
Across the News Media, May 2006.
Kolodzy predicts that the new century will be an era of change and choice in
journalism, with media old and new, niche and mass, and personal and global
combined in myriad and innovative ways. She provides real-world examples of news
operations practicing convergence journalism, such as ESPN, Christian Science
Monitor, Providence Journal, MSNBC/MSNBC.com, CNET News.com, Northwest
Cable News (Seattle), Seattle Times, Ohio News Network, WBNS (Columbus, OH),
Chicago Tribune, ChicagoLand TV, Tampa Tribune, tbo.com (Tampa), WFLA-TV
(Tampa), Lawrence Journal-World (Kansas), Columbus Dispatch, Hartford
Courant, WTIC (Hartford, CT), and New York 1. She also includes a special section
on convergence journalism in children's news, featuring insights from Weekly
Reader/Scholastic publishing and Time For Kids.
This is an ideal text supplement for journalism students beginning to learn
convergence—and for instructors who want to teach convergence but aren't sure
where to start.
Gracie Lawson-Borders (University of Wyoming). Media Organizations & Convergence:
Case Studies of Media Convergence Pioneers. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005.
Lawson-Borders provides a brief history of media segments and their evolutions as
they adapt to emerging technologies, media conglomeration, and the competitive and
global changes that have occurred in the industry. She also examines the social,
cultural, and political implications of technology and convergence in the operations
and practices of media organizations. Case studies profile three media convergence
pioneers--Tribune Company in Chicago, Media General in Richmond, and Belo
Corporation in Dallas.
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Louisa Ha and Richard Ganahl, eds. (Bloomsburg University). Webcasting Worldwide:
Business Models of an Emerging Global Medium, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006.
This book develops a theoretical framework to analyze business models of emerging
media, with a focus on the business practices of leading web casters in television,
radio, government and non-profits in the world’s most developed broadband markets.
Country studies include USA, Europe, China, Japan, and the Arab world.
Kevin Kawamoto, ed., Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of
Journalism, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
An excellent primer on the economic, technological and sociological meanings of
convergence. Chapter 5 by Northwestern University Prof. Rich provides a superb
historical overview of how the concept emerged and developed as well as a schematic
breakdown of the different meanings and operating principles convergence embodies
in contemporary newsroom practice. Also includes a compelling first-person account
of international reporting by a photojournalist, and a case study and student exercise
analyzing a multimedia news web site.
Kenneth C. Killebrew, Managing Media Convergence: Pathways to Journalistic
Cooperation, Iowa State University Press, 2004.
Killebrew adopts an organizational management perspective to investigate how best
to manage media managers and journalists in the emerging cross-platform media
environment. Managerial expediency, efficiency and effectiveness are considered
through discussions of case studies and best practices. Director of graduate studies in
the School of Mass Communications, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa, Killebrew has
worked extensively in both television and print media for more than fifteen years.
Stephen Quinn, Convergence Journalism: The Essentials of Multimedia Reporting, Peter
Lang Publishing, 2005
Quinn describes the main business models for convergent journalism and provides
case studies of successful convergent newsrooms around the world, while also
explaining in practical terms how to introduce convergence into the newsroom. “Full
convergence involves a radical change in approach and mindset among journalists
and their managers. It involves a shared assignment desk where the key people, the
multimedia assignment editors, assess each news event on its merits and send the
most appropriate people to the story. Convergence coverage should thus be driven by
the significance of the news event. “
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Neil Shister. Media Convergence, Diversity and Democracy, Aspen Institute, 2003
Aspen’s 2002 summer conference was one of the first to address media convergence
issues with high-level attendees from public and private sectors. Drawing on the
proceedings, Shister’s book reviews how the “new” media can expand citizen access
and civic participation but also addresses concerns that media convergence and
business consolidations can either enhance or frustrate this trend. He also reviews
concern that the new media may become bottlenecked rather than continue the open
architecture of the Internet, and the policy choices available to government and
industry.
Dan Gillmor, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, For the People, O’Reilly,
2006.
Gillmor agues that news has evolved from a “lecture” to a “conversation” in which
“lines blur between producers and consumers, changing the role of both in ways we’re
only beginning to grasp.” For traditional media, now is “the best opportunity in
decades” to do better journalism by aggressively embracing interactivity. Gillmor
foresees a day when consumers will be a major force in helping cover news, through
“event blogs” and “citizen reporting” that can supplement news organizations’ limited
staff. He also suggests that democratizing news reporting raises new issues about
fairness, accuracy and credibility, so good editorial guidelines – and editors - will be
needed now more than ever.
RESEARCH/TRAINING CENTERS
Newsplex - University of South Carolina
Part of a global consortium under the overall management of the Europe-based IFRA,
Newsplex is America’s premier media convergence training center. Hundreds of media
managers and journalists have taken professional training seminars or courses here since the
facilities opened in November 2002. All programs are designed to provide news
organizations with strategy, knowledge and expertise necessary to work across multiple
media simultaneously and in real-time, to function as the hubs of reinvented information-
based service companies, and to manage the pace of constant media change and innovation.
Most programs involve the use of the Newsplex “micro-newsroom” which allows students to
gain real world experience in converged multi-media reporting, editing and production.
Newsplex’s web site also offers a 10-minute video entitled “Tomorrow’s News,” that depicts
two editors running a complex news flow in a sophisticated, information-packed newsroom
at some unspecified time in the future. Communicating seamlessly with local staff and
remote "e-lance" reporters, the editors coordinate newsgathering in many different media
and shape convergent stories for distribution through a variety of integrated print and
electronic services. Content is live-linked to the newsroom database, allowing every angle to
be covered simultaneously depending on a subscriber's interest, while information alerts are
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sent out to mobiles and PDAs. A central "newsman" gives the editors a topographic-like
understanding of their news wires, Internet resources and up-to-the-moment reader
feedback.
Newsplex offers five different levels of affiliation to outside academic and media institutions,
ranging from ongoing information exchange and curriculum sharing to full fledged
franchising of the Newsplex model. Its global board includes: Digital Technology
International, Edipresse Publications, ETV, Guardian Media Group, John S. & James L.
Knight Foundation, CCI Europe, Star Publications, Morris Communications, and PR
Newswire, among others.
CONTACT: http://www.newsplex.org/video.shtml
News Research Institute - Ball State University
Begun in September 2006, NRI brings together interdisciplinary groups of students, faculty
and industry professionals to help the news industry prepare for a converged future and to
educate upcoming journalists through rigorous immersive learning.
During its first year of operation, NRI will coordinate several immersive learning projects,
including NewsLink Indiana, BSU’s converged news project serving East Central Indiana
(begun in 2003); WebFirst, a project to develop online applications for print media; and J-
Ideas, the university's national scholastic journalism and First Amendment project.
NRI also will test new media products, conduct research projects to examine high school
media convergence and host professional workshops. Chris Bavender, a veteran journalist
serving as managing editor of NewsLink Indiana, will direct NRI operations.
NRI is the fourth immersive learning institute created at Ball State as a result of a $20
million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to fund the Digital Exchange, an initiative
expanding opportunities for students to participate in innovative, immersive educational
experiences. The other institutes, administered by Ball State's Center for Media
Design (CMD), are the Institute for Digital Entertainment and Education (IDEE), the
Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts and Animation (IDIAA) and the Institute for Digital
Fabrication and Rapid Prototyping (IDFRP).
Ball State has long enjoyed a national reputation as a media research center, developed as a
result of several highly publicized consumer usage studies and interactive television news
projects, recently created partnerships with several major media organizations, and its
ranking as the nation's top wireless campus.
CONTACT: http://www.bsu.edu/cmd/institutes/nri/
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Columbia Interactive: Journalism in the Digital Age - Columbia University
This e-seminar by John Pavlik leads you through the myriad ways in which
digital technologies have had an impact on the practice of journalism, from
the way reporters gather information and present news stories to how news
organizations structure themselves and do business. Discussing technologies
now in use and on the horizon, Professor Pavlik provides an overview of the
changes and challenges the digital age has brought to the purveyors and the
consumers of the news.
CONTACT: http://ci.columbia.edu/ci/eseminars/0801_detail.html
Knight New Media Center – USC Annenberg Center/ GSJ at UC Berkeley
Launched in April 2006, this new center offers customized week-long “boot camps” in multi-
media reporting for traditional print and broadcast journalists, as well as seminars for new
media journalists to learn how to better cover specialized topics. A national advisory board of
senior digital journalists and scholars will help guide the center. Started with a $650,000
grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
CONTACT: www.knightnewmediacenter.org
Institute for New Media Studies - University of Minnesota
The Institute is one of four components of the University of Minnesota’s School of
Journalism and Mass Communication’s "New Media Initiative," led by its director Al Tims.
Funding for the New Media Initiative was allocated by the Minnesota Legislature in 1998, but
it was not until Nora Paul was hired as the Institute’s director in July 2000 that the center’s
operations got underway. The Institute sponsors new media conferences, conducts
research, trains journalism students, and builds bridges to national and local media
practitioners. The effect of new media technologies on the basic craft of story-telling and
reporting is central to the Institute’s activities. A detailed report on the Institute’s first three
years of operation is available on its web site.
CONTACT: http://www.inms.umn.edu/
J-Lab: Institute for Interactive Journalism – University of Maryland
The brainchild of Jan Schaffer, former business editor and Pulitzer Prize winner for the
Philadelphia Inquirer, and one of the nation’s leading thinkers in the journalism reform
movement. Schaffer launched J-Lab in 2002 to help newsrooms use innovative computer
technologies to engage people in important public issues. The center’s main activities are to:
spotlight new forms of digital storytelling www.J-Lab.org
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reward innovative practices through the $16,000 Knight-Batten Awards for
Innovations in Journalism
fund cutting-edge citizen media start-ups through its New Voices project (www.J-
NewVoices.org).
sponsor a web tutorial on how to launch community news sites (www.J-
Learning.org).
J-Lab’s projects are supported with grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.
CONTACT: http://www.J-Lab.org
The Media Center – American Press Institute
The Media Center is a nonprofit think tank that helps leaders in media, technology,
academia, philanthropies, NGOs, non-profit and other businesses understand the challenges
of a changing multimedia world. The Center provides a variety of services and programs,
including:
(1) Research on emerging habits and behaviors of consumers, including ethnographic and
proprietary qualitative research (2) Strategic plans and approaches for media integration,
diversification and convergence (3) Organizational and culture training for news
organizations (4) Management briefings and workshops on forces shaping the news business,
and (5) Scenario planning.
The Center’s website includes a “Convergence Tracker” that identifies trends in media
convergence, with detailed case studies by James Gentry of the U-Kansas School of
Journalism and Mass Communications.
A division of The American Press Institute, The Media Center was established in 1997 to help
the news industry devise strategies and tactics for digital media. In September 2003 it
merged with New Directions for News, an independent media futures think tank.
http://www.mediacenter.org/
CONFERENCES
Aspen Institute, Aspen, Co., July 16-18, 2004
“Journalistic Values and the Newsroom of the Future”
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/site/c.huLWJeMRKpH/b.741157/k.BCC6/Conference_Sum
mary.htm
Participants, all high-level public and private sector leaders, addressed source of public
skepticism and mistrust with mainstream media and outlined strategies for increasing
transparency and accountability.
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These include: internal changes to strengthen newsroom operations and communications
with other departments, new hiring and training policies, and an expansion of audience
feedback channels and community forums to identify local news concerns.
The Media Center - American Press Institute, June 18, 2004.
“Convergence 3.0 - Future Media Scenarios @ NEXPO”
http://www.mediacenter.org/04/nexpo/
A pre-NEXPO 1-day workshop exploring the state-of-the-art and future of multimedia, cross-
platform publishing. Seminar-style participatory discussions covered:
State-of-the-art in print-broadcast-online media convergence
Mobile, multimedia audiences and the forces shaping changes in media
Case studies in converged content and revenue ventures
“We Media” and the role of participant audiences
How to plan and manage change in an adaptive organization
The Media Matrix, The Media Center’s forthcoming report with specific action steps
today’s media companies should take to become tomorrow’s adaptive multimedia
information enterprises
Accenture Global Convergence Forum 2005, Orlando, FL, April 11-13, 2005.
“Convergence: Myth or Reality?”
http://www.accenture.com/Global/About_Accenture/Business_Events/By_Industry/Comm
unications/AccentureGCF2005.htm?c=cht_ccidnsba_0406&n=ccid_gcf2005_text1
This is an annual forum focusing on business and technology opportunities relating to media
convergence. This year’s forum emphasized the role and value of digital content, and the
emergence of new broadband and Internet protocol opportunities to boost growth and
profits. Interesting presentations by Anne Sweeney on how Disney Corp. has handled
convergence issues, and a closing keynote by Don Logan on the successes and failures of the
Time Warner/AOL merger.
University of South Carolina-Brigham Young University, October 13-15, 2005
“Media Convergence: Cooperation, Collision and Change”
http://www.sc.edu/cmcis/news/archive/byuconvconf.html
One of the best overall conferences on media convergence issues, with expert panels
discussing the most recent innovations in academic training and newsroom practice.
University of South Carolina and Ifra Newsplex, October 19-21, 2006
“Convergence and Society: Ethics, Religion and New Media Conference”
http://newsplex.sc.edu/newsplexcon06.html
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One of the first convergence conferences to focus on a specific theme or topic area, with
additional sessions on recent trends in journalism education, social networking sites, and
blogging.
Society of Editors (SOE) Conference, Glasgow, Scotland, Fall 2006
Focus on new media and convergence issues
http://www.societyofeditors.co.uk/conference_press_speeches.html
An overseas view of convergence challenges with leading media practitioners and marketing
professionals in the UK.
Broadcast Education Association, Las Vegas, NV, April 27-29, 2006
“Convergence Shockwave: Change, Challenge and Opportunity”
http://governmentvideo.com/articles/publish/article_853.shtml
The latest annual BEA conference to tackle media convergence issues. Dominant voices call
for “resocializing” print and broadcast journalists to work together as multi-platform content
providers.
Texas Tech University, Research colloquium, April 19-20, 2007
“Expanding the Definition of Convergence and Integration: Call for Papers,”
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/masscom/about/newsstories/convergentcallpapers.pdf
SD Forum, San Jose, CA, November 9, 2006
“1st Annual ‘Business of New Media’ Conference”
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/11-09-
2006/0004471353&EDATE=
Regional one-day conference attended by notable Silicon Valley media, technology and
investment experts. Keynote speaker was Dr. Larry Sanger, founder of the Citizendium
Project and co-founder of Wikipedia. SDForum is sponsored by 30 venture capital firms,
financial institutions, multinational companies and the City of San Jose.
CASE STUDIES
Some key case studies of media convergence are described at great length in several of the
books listed above. In addition, a number of web sites, as well as the Convergence Newsletter
published by the University of South Carolina, present critical case studies, usually based on
fieldwork and in-depth interviews by the authors - either working journalists or professors of
journalism.
The following case studies are presented in chronological order of appearance, and are
broken down by the type of converged platforms involved.
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PRINT AND WEB
“The Future of the Newsroom: The Washington Post,” by Carla Savalli, Nov. 14, 2006
http://www.spoksemanreview.com/blogs/newsroom/archive/?postID=251
This is the first in a series of convergence field investigations conducted by the senior editor
for local news at the Spokane (WA) Review. Unlike other big city dailies (e.g. New York
Times and Los Angeles Times), the Washington Post has developed a strong interactive
partnership between its print and online news platforms that has allowed its online division
to flourish. Savalli describes the physical lay-out and day-to-day operations of the two
newsrooms, which are not formally integrated, in part due to union issues, and in part, to
preserve the editorial autonomy of the online division, which might otherwise be
compromised. In 2006, WashingtonPost.Com was the recipient of a major award for the
best daily newspaper web site in the nation.
“Center Stage,” by Carl Sessions Stepp, cstepp@jmail.umd.edu
http://www.ajr.org/article_printable.asp?id=4075
American Journalism Review’s senior editor reviews the Web operations of the Houston
Chronicle, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the local Daily Times in Salisbury, MD,
finding the results “enlightening, and sometimes surprising.” While each company is moving
to consolidate its print and web operations, full-scale integration is still a long way off. The
Chronicle has gone the furthest organizationally by physically remodeling the newsroom to
accommodate Web journalists, because according to a senior print manager, “In order for it
to be clear what we’re doing, they’ve got to be close – in sight, in mind, not out of sight, out of
mind.”
USA Today.com, with 10 million unique visitors monthly, puts less emphasis on breaking
news updates than on special stories, imaginative packaging, and Web-only features. The
Post offers a “bifurcated” home page, one national, another local, depending on the zip code
of the 8.2 million visitors. Even the Daily Times, with its 130,000 web visitors and only a few
staffers trained to post online, recently established its top priority as “how to set up a 24-hour
newsroom.”
“Convergence Case Study: LJ World.Com,” by James Gentry April 14, 2003
http://www.mediacenter.org/content/777.cfm
Timothy L. O’Brien, “The Newspaper of the Future,” The New York Times, June 26, 2005.
See also the story on NPR’s Morning Edition, April 13, 2005.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4597203
One of the original multi-media convergence pioneers, with commonly owned television,
cable, newspaper and online properties all operating out of a single building and broadly
overseen by a single management team. The hub of the operation is the Lawrence Journal-
World newspaper, with a circulation of 20,000, founded in 1891, and still owned by the
descendants of the original Simons family. “The Simons family, through the World
Company, enjoys an unfettered and often-criticized media monopoly…but has used that
advantage to cross-pollinate its properties…and to take technological and financial risks that
other owners might have avoided.” (O’Brien). “I don’t think of us as being in the newspaper
