More Convergence Chronicle entries

The Iraq war is sure to deliver many interesting examples of media convergence, and one of the first ones is a highly unusual deal between CNN and Cox Newspapers. After hearing that the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and its owner, Cox, would not use all 8 of the military embedding slots given to it for reporters in Iraq, CNN approached it and agreed to take the five extra slots for CNN reporters -- under the condition that the CNN reporters file reports for Cox newspapers. "All of the people we will use to fill those slots will have print backgrounds," CNN spokesman Matthew Furman told Editor & Publisher. "All of our reporters already file for CNN.com so this will not be that different." In other words, the cross-training CNN reporters have already received in filing for the Web site is now serving yet another useful purpose for the company and the reporters, who otherwise wouldn't have been able to go abroad. [2/24]

Great Work: Projo.com on The Station Fire
The Providence Journal's Web site has done such a good job covering the fatal fire at The Station nightclub in Rhode Island that it's hard to know what to single out. In addition to continually updating the site with staff-written stories on the latest developments from the moment the news first broken early Friday morning, the site has published a slew of impressive online-only features, including: A first-person account from a survivor searching for his mystery savior; an online memorial for readers to post condolences for the fire victims; five flash slide shows and video from a partner TV site; useful information such as victim and memorial details; and much, much more. As a public service, the site has not only been running a Web log of online reaction to the fire by staff blogger Sheila Lennon, but has taken the admirable step of moving the Web log outside the site's registration firewall. [2/24]

Great Work: Michael Jackson Unmasked
Here's a perfect use of animation online: Dateline NBC combined a series of photographs of Michael Jackson's face through the years and morphed them together to visually show the effect of all of his plastic surgeries -- in a way more powerful than any quote or video clip could. [2/20]

WashingtonPost.com's WHNPA Video Honors
In competition with national TV networks, local affiliates and independent photojournalists, washingtonpost.com claimed an astounding 27 individual awards in 15 categories at the White House News Photographers Association's 2003 television photography and editing competitions. WashingtonPost.com's videojournalists Travis Fox, John Poole, Ben de la Cruz and Chet Rhodes were awarded individual honors in multiple categories. And Fox was named WHNPA's "Editor of the Year" for the second consecutive year. "Not long ago the Web wasn't even a factor in video journalism -- now washingtonpost.com is winning more awards than the major television outlets," said Christopher M. Schroeder, CEO and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. "Their incredible success in the television category over the last three years has made a powerful statement about the growing role of multimedia on the Internet." Indeed! Winning videos included this fantastic package, Rebuilding a Fortress, Rebuilding a Life. Here's a list of all of washingtonpost.com's winning entries and the complete list of winners. Go here to Watch all 17 of washingtonpost.com's award-winning videos from 2001. [2/6]

Shuttle Debris Video Online
In addition to Florida Today, which published a close-up video of the Columbia launch, The Washington Post also posted a video online with a different view of the debris hitting the left wing. The site smartly enlarged, slowed and looped the video to make the debris easier to see. WashingtonPost.com also posted multimedia reports online from Web staffers in the region. "We had a Web team in Louisiana working on another story and they quickly moved to Texas and filed audio and video reports," Senior Video Editor Chet Rhodes tells CyberJournalist.net. "We also used one of our Post-Newsweek stations (KPRC) to send back video over the past 3 days." [2/4]

Free Convergence Symposium
The University of Florida is holding its 2nd annual symposium to discuss the "future of journalism in a world of multiple media" on Friday, Feb. 7, 2003. The symposium, which is free, includes panels on Interactivity and News Audiences, How to Think in Multimedia, Sports Journalism in the 21st Century,  and TV and Online: A Two-Headed Monster. [1/31]

Cox TV Joins IBS
Internet Broadcasting Systems continues expanding, adding all 15 Cox-owned television stations in 11 markets to the roster of local news Web sites it manages. With the addition of the 15 Cox stations, the IBS Network now includes 64 TV station sites and covers 93 percent of households in the largest TV markets. [1/22]

How Technology Will Change Journalism
Journalists may even be in for a sea change, ABCNews.com Managing Producer Dorian Benkoil writes in an article for CyberJournalist.net. Digital technology may revamp what the public thinks of as “news,” just as television and radio remade what had been a world ruled by print. If the news “platform” becomes irrelevant, he says, will the cyberjournalist be someone who gathers massive quantities of journalistic “data” that can be parsed in numerous ways? Or will the need for intelligent sifting and analysis become ever more crucial to help the info-harried user rise above the cyber-torrent? The answer, he says, is both. [1/13]

What Time is it? News Time
Soon news junkies will be able to get news on their watches, thanks to a new platform called Media2Go Microsoft and Intel are designing. "The watches will connect to PCs to calibrate themselves, download software and connect wirelessly to streaming data beamed over FM radio signals to grab the latest sports scores or stock prices," CNet reports. That's right -- there'll be no escaping the news. [1/10]

Songs from the Grave
When a famous singer dies, posting audio clips with the obituary is a good idea, as The New York Times did when The Clash's Joe Strummer died. [1/7]

Journalists Crossing Platforms
A growing minority of reporters not only understand what convergence means, they practice it on a daily basis -- reporting and producing content for print, the Internet, radio, and/or television, reports Steve Outing in Editor & Publisher. For now, he says, these people are unusual, but in the future the majority of journalists may live such cross-platform working lives. [12/13]

Camera-Equipped Mobile Phones
Mobile phones equipped with cameras may be the next piece of technology to have a major impact on journalism, says the San Jose Mercury News' Dan Gillmor. Already there are more than 10 million camera-equipped mobile phones in Japan and some of their owners take snapshots and post them to Web pages. "Watch the next time a major news event, such as a bad earthquake, takes place there. Before the big Japanese media organizations even have time to scramble their photographers to the scene, the world will be able to view the aftermath of the quake -- and, no doubt, videos of the quake as it happened -- on a variety of Web sites. [12/10]

New Cross-Media Partnership in Miami
Cross-media partnerships are a growing trend across the country, and the latest one forming is in Miami, where The Herald and WFOR-CBS 4 are teaming up in a far-reaching alliance to share news gathering, personnel, online content, office space and promotional efforts. Under the deal, which takes effect Dec. 2, CBS 4 will feature a Herald Report, highlighting the newspaper's stories, in its three daily newscasts. In return, The Herald will give CBS 4 a slot on Page 4A to feature whatever it chooses. The television station will have the right to break Herald exclusives, access to The Herald's foreign bureaus and office space in The Herald's Fort Lauderdale bureau. In exchange, WFOR's meteorologist will be featured on The Herald's weather page and even assist in redesigning the feature. And WFOR's medical expert  may be featured in the newspaper's health section. Other joint projects will be developed, such as possibly a weekly news show that the two entities would co-produce. Another part of the alliance involves WFOR's sister station, WBFS-UPN 33, and The Herald's alternative weekly newspaper, Street Miami. Starting in January, Street Miami will have its own feature segment several times a week on WBFS' newscasts. In return, the weekly paper will give a slot to WBFS. And as for online collaboration, The Herald will supply late-breaking stories and content to WFOR's Web site, www.wfor.com, while WFOR will provide Norcross' weather forecast and a real-time radar screen to www.herald.com. Wow. That's convergence. [11/25]

Howard University Launches Converged Media Lab
The National Newspaper Publishers Association, the Howard University Department of Journalism and Microsoft launched a Converged Media Lab housed at the university. [10/20]

Medill's New Multimedia Digs
Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism 's new $17.5 million building, the McCormick Tribune Center, will house Medill's broadcast, new media and regular journalism classes and be able to broadcast programming across campus or around the world. "We wanted to enable Medill to really take the lead in producing students who understand and are comfortable operating in a rich multimedia, digital atmosphere. That is the future," said Richard A. Behrenhausen, president of the McCormick Tribune Foundation.  [10/10]

Multiple Media
More evidence that people are increasingly surfing the Net and watching TV at the same time: a new study by two Midwestern university professors found that 59% of males and 67% of females watching TV regularly or occasionally go online at the same time. Of those on the Internet, 69% of males and 76% of females regularly or occasionally also watch TV. [10/9]

Watching Convergence Unfold
Journalism student Joseph Van Harken recently found himself in the middle of a breaking news shooting scene, watching news media converge in the field. He quickly learned there are many ways to tell the same story, and each way has its own purpose. In an essay for CyberJournalist.net, he describes the coverage and the lessons he learned. [9/28]

Computers & TV are Roommates
Here's some good news for news organizations pushing convergence: Over half of U.S. adult Internet users have a TV and PC in the same room, with half of those reporting they watch TV and use the Net simultaneously, according to a new study from comScore Media Metrix. This shows that sending viewers to your Web site for more information during broadcasts makes sense. However, the study found that 74 percent said their Internet use was unrelated to the program they are watching. This indicates that most programs aren't doing a good enough job of integrating online components into their broadcasts. [9/18/02]

Biting the Hand that Feeds You
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has been distributing T-shirts that read: "When's the last time your family sat down on a Sunday morning and read the Internet together? You can't replace the paper." On E-Media Tidbits (where you can see an image of the shirt), University of Alabama journalism professor Jim Stovall notes the irony of the message: Just below the words Star-Telegram in the image of the newspaper's masthead is the paper's Web address. When will newspapers learn that their Web sites are not competition, but simply a new way to distribute and earn revenue from their product? [9/18/02]

New Breed of Journalist
CNN International President Chris Cramer says broadcasters are increasingly relying on multi-skilled staff that can deliver stories, pictures and technical know-how. He told the International Broadcast Convention in Amsterdam that this new breed of reporters and technicians are smarter, skilled across the board and can work in the various forms of media, according to , said CNN International President Chris Cramer. They use new portable technology such as videophones, he said. And at least one CNN staffer, he said, can not only report stories, but fix the telecom links. [9/18/02]

Thousands Want Chicago Tribune's 9/11 CD
The Chicago Tribune has been getting thousands of orders from all over the country for its Sept. 11 commemorative CD-ROM containing stories related to the attacks; streaming-video interviews with 25 Tribune reporters who covered the story; an interactive that tracks the flight path and chronology of each hijacked plane; and video and more than 300 photographs of related images, including many never published before, according to a customer service representative. The representative told CyberJournalist.net that daily call volume has nearly tripled, from about 6,500 to 18,000 a day.  "It's mind-blowing," she said. The CD-ROM was designed simply as a give-away to subscribers, but those who don't can buy the CD-ROM here. [9/16/02]

USA Today, The Network
USA Today publisher Tom Curly tells Advertising Age, "We are no longer a newspaper; we are a network. We feed content to TV. We feed content to the Internet from the same core platform."

Newspapers Distribute 9/11 CD-ROMS
Many newspapers are distributing special sections to commemorate Sept. 11, but at least two are going all-out and producing multimedia CD-ROMS. On Sunday, every copy of The Chicago Tribune included a commemorative CD-ROM containing 600 Tribune stories related to the attacks that ran between Sept. 11 and Sept. 21 of last year; streaming-video interviews with 25 Tribune reporters who covered the story; an interactive that tracks the flight path and chronology of each hijacked plane; and more than 300 photographs of related images, including many that never ran in the paper. "It's a way to access the journalism through a different medium," Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski told Editor & Publisher. In a new use of convergence, the CD-ROM also included video images from Tribune Co.-owned TV stations WGN in Chicago and WPIX in New York. (For those who don't subscribe, you can buy the CD-ROM here.)

Reverse Convergence
WashingtonPost.com videojournalist Travis Fox spent four months with a sheet metal worker who is helping rebuild the Pentagon after his son was killed in the Sept. 11 attack there. The documentary he produced, "Rebuilding a Fortress, Rebuilding a Life," is first-rate, but what makes it so noteworthy is that ABC News aired his piece Aug. 16 on "Nightline UpClose." This is the first time a nationally broadcast television news program was based entirely on a documentary produced by a news Web site, according to Poynter's Al Tompkins. The video was also presented in five segments on WashingtonPost.com (which includes additional footage not seen on TV), where it can still be viewed. Fox, you may recall, has previously been lauded here for being named the White House News Photographers Association's 2002 Camera Person of the Year.

Cross-Training Journalists
The BBC and journalists' unions recently struck a deal to allow BBC staffers to take training as videojournalists. Kerry Northrup, executive director of Ifra Centre for Advanced News Operations, tells the European Press Network's EPN World Reporter that this is a good move, adding that journalists who are unable or unwilling to adapt to media convergence risk being "phased out." "A lot of people who are journalists today simply cannot be journalists tomorrow," says Northrup, a leading convergence advocate. ". . .They won't adapt to thinking in terms of multiple media rather than being concerned only about their personal area of specialization. They are media bigots, for want of a better term, insisting past reason that print is print, broadcast is broadcast, Web is Web, and never will they mesh. The idea of blending formats to create a story greater than the sum of its parts remains foreign to them." Many journalists don't like the idea of needing cross-media training, believing that it will stretch them too thin, but the reality is that those who have convergence skills will be the ones who get ahead.

HBO teams with Salon
Here's an interesting pairing: HBO's film unit is teaming up with Salon.com to develop print and film projects. HBO will underwrite stories for Salon.com, with the option of adapting them for movies.

Video vs. Stills
Virginian-Pilot photojournalist Roger Richards discusses the difference between telling stories with still and video photography with Poynter's Al Tompkins "The main similarity between video and stills is that good, carefully composed images are a must," he says. "The main difference is that video requires an individual to deal with several elements at the same time: picture, sound, and image sequencing."

Oklahoma's NewsOK.com
The NewsOK.com partnership between The Oklahoman and News9 is one of the few converged news outfits owned by different corporate parents. The deal, which allows the site to post anything that goes out over the air on News9 or that appears in the print newspaper, has generally been considered a success. "It expands our ability to gather information," News9's lead anchor, Kelly Ogle, told OJR. "We don't work in lockstep with the newspaper, so we're still able to compete as well."

Tampa's Experiment
WFLA News Director Forest Carr describes one of the most talked-about examples of convergence, the News Center in Tampa. "The Tampa model of convergence, in my opinion, is helping to create a new and stronger form of journalism, and it's doing that with existing resources and skill sets," he says.

Washington Post Union: Don't Write for Web
Washington Post newsroom union leaders asked reporters to stop writing for the paper's Web site in an effort to draw attention to their contract negotiations. Articles in The Post are automatically posted on WashingtonPost.com. But Post reporters are often asked to write additional, early stories for the Web site when significant news breaks. Post reporters are not paid extra for these stories and can decline to file them, though they rarely do, Frank Ahrens reported in The Post.

Crash Convergence
Newsrooms moving toward convergence must recognize that in breaking news situations, Web sites can't always count on TV reporters to file for the Internet, at least not right away. Portland's KGW.com faced this when covering the recent helicopter crash into Mount Hood, and sent a Web producer to the scene to report on the rescue separately from the TV reporters. "On big stories, there's no time for the TV reporters to talk to the web staff," said Jim Parker, KGW.com's executive editor. "By having our own producer there, he can take the story and round it out for us in a print format, which certainly comes in handy." As a result, says Lost Remote's Cory Bergman, the Web site's coverage "quickly outpaced its TV and newspaper counterparts, writing in-depth stories with smart illustrations, detailed photos, slide shows and lots of video."

Convergence Case Studies
Poynter's Al Tomkins did a series of five "convergence" case studies. Find out why the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, which partners with radio as well as TV, doesn't hesitate to break news in any medium, and how The Washington Post has built one of the most extensive media convergence networks in the world.

Rise of Digital News Networks
Media companies like Belo, Tribune and Knight Ridder are flocking to Web publishing systems that tie sites closer together, lower production costs, smooth the way for network advertising buys and enable editorial staffs to share content across TV, print and online newsrooms much more easily than before, J.D. Lasica reports in the Online Journalism Review. "In my book, that's convergence done right."

Converged Story About Convergence
Jane Allen Stevens takes a look at the ups and downs of one of the first major convergence experiments, WFLA-TV, the Tampa Tribune and TBO.com -- in a piece that includes several interesting video interviews. "It's changed the dynamic of the newsroom," says Tribune managing editor Donna Reed. "Deadlines are constant. We have a new way of thinking, visually, because TV and online are so visually dependent, and newspapers are not.

A Convergence Success Story
The relationship between the Dallas Morning News, WFAA, Texas Cable News (TXCN, Belo's statewide, 24-hour cable news channel) and their respective Web sites has become a model of convergence, reports Mediaweek. For example, writers and editors for the Morning News and WFAA recently produced an in-depth investigative report on drug-running into and out of Mexico by teenagers, a story that was picked up by ABC News. They set the standard for integrating newspapers, TV stations and cable news regionally," says Lee Westerfield, a media analyst with UBS Warburg, who covers Belo. "Dallas itself is the standard for newspaper-TV convergence in the United States."

News Without the Paper
The New York Times Company is headed toward convergence, moving into cable TV to complement its Web site, newspaper and wire service. "Newspapers cannot be defined by the second word -- paper. They've got to be defined by the first -- news," The New York Times Company chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. tells the Online Journalism Review. ""All of us have to become agnostic as to the method of distribution. We've got to be as powerful online, as powerful in TV and broadcasting, as we are powerful in newsprint." He's right: this is the future of news.

Teaching Convergence at USC
USC's Annenberg School for Communication plans to start training all journalism students for convergence -- teaching them to write for newspapers, produce broadcasts for TV and radio, and produce multimedia stories for the Web. The University of Kansas and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism are others that offer cross-platform training, but hopefully more will start focusing on convergence. Morris Communications, which runs The Topeka Capital-Journal in Kansas among other sites, trains new staff members in a corporate "boot camp" that teaches them how to work in a multi-platform environment, because journalism schools aren't producing enough graduates with the skills it needs.

Mitch, Inc.
Mitch Albom works in print (Detriot Free Press), TV ("ESPN's Sports
Reporters), books ("Tuesdays With Morrie"), radio ("The Mitch Albom
Show") and online (albom.com). "A lot of people like to talk about
convergence," says the Detriot Free Press's publisher, Heath Meriwether.
"Mitch Albom is convergence."

Hot Button Convergence Issues
Here's an informal list of questions to ask when your online site publishes on a different schedule and with a different mindset than your traditional news partner, but you're still required to touch base with that partner before you publish. From Projo.com editor Andrea Panciera.

Inside a Converged Newsroom
Poynter's Doug White looks at out the Tampa Bay converged newsroom covered the Sept. 11 attacks in this four-part series: Addressing Staff Fatigue; New News Cycles; Out of the Box Reporting; A Digital Pub Goes Analog.

Go Slow on Cross-Ownership
AJR's Thomas Kunkel warns it can be bad for news consumers.

Learning About Convergence
Doing convergence right takes a lot of effort and commitment, but it's
worth it. "When newspapers are willing to generate significant local
content for television stations, and television stations expand their
on-air reporting to newspapers, and both contribute highly interactive
and locally relevant material to websites, the public can benefit," says
Poynter's Al Tompkins.

Sites Help Circulation
Data suggest newspaper Web sites are having a small, but positive effect
on single copy and circulation sales, as well as, readership, according
to a study by Belden Associates.

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