邢唷> 8:7欹'` 餜4bjbj"9"928@S@SC%8 $ D D D D D x x x $~hl 9e x x e e D D 4Fe D D e D 8 p j劔E \0R RR<x "   x x x  SXx x x e e e e D Convergence Journalism Why Convergence? In opening his epic A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens wrote that it was the best of times and the worst of times. Those words aptly describe the state of journalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Is the best of times because of the wide range of news outlets, news operations, and venues available for getting information about the rapidly changing world. A visit to a bookstore or newsstand finds a display of dozens of magazines and newspaper titles. Basic cable television opens up a hundred or more channels for news entertainment, and information, and the internet provides thousands of sites. The choices seem endless. Yet it is also the worst of times for journalism. Audiences are becoming more fragmented while news media ownership becomes more concentrated. Daily newspapers see a decline in readers, as well as a decline in advertising. The nightly network news sees its viewership decline, as the age of its audiences rises. Journalism itself is being redefined. Anyone with a website and information can have access on a web log (blog) to an audience greater than many daily newspapers or monthly magazines. Bloggers are challenging the traditional media抯 role as gatekeepers of news and information. As a result, the news industry is in a state of flux and. some might say, a state of disarray. Technological, social, and economic changes are challenging traditional news organizations to develop innovative ways to attract new readers and viewers and to hold on to current ones. Convergence is one strategy being tried in several newsrooms across the United States. Yet convergence in journalism is ill-defined, misunderstood, and misrepresented. It has been used to explain everything from computer use in news to corporate consolidation. When it comes to journalism, convergence means a new way of thinking about the news, producing the news, and delivering the news, using all media to their fullest potential to reach a diverse and increasingly distracted public. Convergence refocuses journalism to its core mission梩o inform the public about its world in the best way possible. But nowadays, the best way is not just one way: newspaper or television or the Internet. The best way is a multiple media way, doing journalism for a public that sometimes gets news from newspapers, at other times gets news from television and radio, and at still other times seeks news online. To be successful at convergence, journalists need to understand the strengths of each news medium or outlet and work to develop and provide news stories that dovetail with those strengths. Convergence requires journalists to put the reading, viewing, and browsing public at the center of their work. However, convergence in journalism has many interpretations and definitions. Most journalists "know it when they see it" but really cannot describe convergence or explain its application in the newsrooms. Although a 2002 survey of journalists indicates that nearly 90 percent of the newsrooms in the Unites States claim they are practicing some form of convergence, those same survey respondents were unable to define just exactly what they are doing that is convergent. More often than not, journalists distrust convergences. They view it as marketing ploy, a way to promote the news as a 損roduct, emphasizing the business rather than journalism in the news industry. They also view it as a management ploy, a way to get fewer journalists to do more work with fewer resources. We examine the different definitions of convergence: technological, economic, and journalistic. We also look at what has happened technologically, socially, and economically that led to this buzzword for all that is new in the news media. TECHNOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE The original discussions of media convergence focused on the technological: computers and digitization. Anyone who has sent an e-mail on a computer or used a cell phone that takes pictures sends text messages is taking for granted technological convergence. The development of digitization would set off a new debate about technological gence. Ithiel de Sola Pool, a communications scholar, pointed out that this next wave of convergence would involve a merging of electronic devices, 搕he convergence of modes. In1983, he noted that 揺lectronic technology is bringing all modes of communications into one system Everything would come down to one device---computer +TV +telephone +stereo + movie player +organizer. This all-in-one mega device has not yet become a household standard. On one level, technological convergence means the coming together of formerly distinct electronic or media delivery systems, changing the equipment used to get information and to access it. But technological convergence has also opened up new ways of presenting that information. Technological convergence has led to multimedia information presentation. The Internet allows formerly separate and distinct storytelling media or platforms----the text of print, the audio of radio, pictures and graphics of visual design, and the moving pictures of animation film, and television ---to be combined into a new way of proving information. Trying to pin down a name for this new, evolving type of journalism that comes together via the Internet has added confusion to the definition of convergence. Journalism distributed on the Internet has been called new media, online news, online news, multimedia journalism, digital news. But it also has become known as convergence journalism. since it marks the coming together of different elements of storytelling. The merger of AOL and Time Warner in 2000 helped solidify the definition of convergence to mean electronic content delivery, because that merger was the coming together of a content company. Time Warner, with an online delivery company, AOL. Yet that merger also created confusion over the definition of convergence, because AOL Time Warner became the largest media conglomerate in the world. Tanks to AOL Time Warner ,and the mergers of other media companies, convergence came to mean media consolidation. JOURNALISTIC CONVERGENCE News organizations that are experimenting with the notion of convergence aim to achieve Fuller抯 goal of 揾igher-quality news in all the formats available: print, online, and on radio and television. The problem comes when convergence is seen as a benefit for media company stockholders and not as a benefit for journalists or for readers, viewers, or browsers. Convergence in journalism requires changes in how news organizations think about the news and news coverage, how they produce the news, and how they deliver the news. Most convergence in journalism today focuses on the last of those areas, delivering the news. It involves a newspaper抯 daily edition or a newscast抯 scripts being placed online, a newspaper reporter appearing on television for a 搕alk-back or interview on his or her story, the television weathercaster developing the weather page for the newspaper. However, dozens of news organizations are trying to also think about and produce news differently. They are trying to ensure that the news they are providing is best suited for the audiences of each medium or format being used to distribute the news. These organizations realize that newspaper readers want more context and detail to their stories, while online browsers are looking for quick hits of information, interactivity, and the ability to seek out other information, and broadcast listeners and viewers are looking for the latest information that puts them at the scene. Convergence in journalism means the coming together of journalists and certain types of journalism that have been operating in separate spheres梟ewspapers, magazines, radio, television, and online梩o provide quality news in all those different formats. That coming together can involve shared resources and information. It can involve joint reporting and production on projects. It can involve 搊ne-man bands or 揵ackpack journalists梠ne person doing the reporting and producing of news for all the different formats. It can involve multimedia storytelling online or what could be called 揷onverged presentation. It can involve some or all of these variations. Convergence journalism is happening in a variety of newsrooms, in a variety of manners. No one form of convergence journalism has risen to be the best template for doing convergence. What has emerged among news organizations aggressively pursuing convergence is a mind-set. While economic convergence has often pushed journalistic convergence, like at the Tribune Company, at Media General抯 Tampa Tribune, tbo.com and WFLA, and Time Warner抯 NY1, journalists are defining what convergence means for them. Journalist Chindu Sreedharan calls it 搇ayering. Journalists 搖nderstand the possibilities of other mediums, contribute across platform when called upon, and begin to layer their stories. Convergence is 搉ew journalism that is evolving to keep up with the times. Convergence is one answer to the question of where journalism should be headed in the twenty-first century. 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