156 ONLINE REPORTING
Media convergence
Text + photos + audio + video + graphics = multimedia.
Suppose you decided to profile Ludwig van Gogh, a brilliant painter/composer.
Which medium, or media, would produce the best story?
To display his paintings, you’d use photographs. To present his music, you’d use
audio recordings. To show him at work — conducting an orchestra or painting —
you’d use video footage. To explain the meaning and impact of his art, you’d use text.
In short, to create the ideal profile, you’d need multimedia. Cross-platform journalism.
Media convergence. Whatever you call it, it’s an idea whose time has finally come.
Stories once trapped on paper can now be posted online; stories once confined to text
and photographs now incorporate audio, video and interactivity.
Technological innovations are transforming 21st-century journalism. Your job, your
newsroom, even the stories you write will soon change dramatically. So get ready.
THE CONVERGED
CONVERGENCE: REPORTER: MYTH
COMING SOON OR INEVITABILITY?
TO A NEWSROOM At the News Center in Tampa, Victoria
Lim is the consumer reporter for WFLA-TV.
NEAR YOU But she also expands her TV reports into
Different journalists mean stories for the Tampa Tribune, where she
different things when they talk writes a weekly column. And she wins
about convergence. (Some even awards for the multimedia projects she
avoid the word, preferring to use posts on the TBO.com Web site.
Lim is known as a “converged reporter.”
the term fusion.) But generally,
In the future, will all journalists need to
convergence takes three forms: exhibit that much versatility?
NEWSROOM CONVERGENCE Some say yes. They point to Preston
Mendenhall, MSNBC’s international editor,
In a converged newsroom, who traveled to Afghanistan in 2001
journalists from different media lugging a backpack that contained a
(TV, radio, newspaper, online) laptop, a satellite phone, digital cameras
all share the same workspace and microphones. Transmitting reports
instead of occupying separate from the field, he single-handedly acted
offices in separate buildings. From a small studio in the business department of the Orlando Sentinel as reporter, producer, editor and engineer.
One of the most notable newsroom, Wilma Colon delivers a daily news-headline Webcast that Others are less enthusiastic about
examples is the News Center in appears on the Sentinel's home page. Colon is a “converged reporter” “backpack journalism.” Some, like online
Tampa, Fla. In 2000, the staffs of who also writes for the Web, reports for El Sentinel (a Spanish-language journalist Martha Stone, worry about the
the Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV weekly) and produces segments for the local Telemundo telecast. “mush of mediocrity” that results when
you overtax busy journalists.
and TBO.com — all owned by
“While some multimedia journalists can
Media General Inc. — moved into one of the newspaper’s graphics. combining text, images, audio, handle a variety of tasks efficiently and
a huge $40-million facility with A TV reporter might cover an video, blogs, podcasts, slide- professionally,” Stone says, “most will only
a TV studio on the first floor event for broadcast, then write a shows — the options are cont- deliver mediocre journalism. While some
and a joint newsroom above it. longer story for the Web site. inually expanding. At present, may excel at writing the story for print or
Sharing a newsroom encour- With training, print reporters content convergence is still in its broadcast, they may produce poor-quality
ages cross-platform cooperation. learn to deliver TV news reports; infancy, but you can glimpse the video or still pictures. . . . Quality comes
When editors from different photojournalists shoot photos, future on innovative Web sites. from those journalists who practice a
media attend the same meetings video and conduct interviews. Imagine, years from now, a defined job, be it writer, videographer,
and plan coverage together, In other words, journalists new hybrid medium combining photographer or editor.”
they can steer each story to the multitask in multimedia, whether the audio and video of TV, the Asking reporters to become do-it-all
responsiveness and resources superjournalists is unrealistic, it’s true.
format that tells it best. it’s one story produced by a
of the Web, the portability and Still, as newsrooms evolve, reporters should
team of TV, print and online be prepared to expand their skills, whether
NEWSGATHERING CONVERGENCE staffers — or one reporter print quality of newspapers.
that means learning how to post audio
Here, reporters, editors and preparing variations of one story Editors and reporters will interviews, write blogs or record podcasts.
photographers collaborate on for several different media. become “content producers” “If I were still reporting,” says new-media
story production. In its simplest trained to choose the most guru Rob Curley, “I’d be doing everything I
form, news crews might share a CONTENT CONVERGENCE effective, entertaining storytelling could to show just how invaluable I was to
helicopter to report on a flood. This is where the final story is techniques from a vast menu of a news organization’s ability to survive all
A TV newscast might borrow presented in multimedia form, multimedia options. the changes we’re going through.”