Page 165 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

Multimedia Journalism: Putting It All Together

he said. “The best writer in the world who refuses to have or share
ideas for how to tell stories in other media is not as useful as someone
with a multiple mind-set” (2004).
Northrup emphasizes that multimedia storytelling involves new
workflows as well as learning new skills. This requires better use of
resources and reorganizing newsrooms to turn them into information-
based operations. He warned that journalists and editorial managers
needed to “preserve their ethics while adapting to the increasingly
numbing pace of media change and innovation.” Northrup has created
four job descriptions for convergent journalism: newsflow manager,
storybuilder, newsresourcer, and multi-skilled reporter. He intentionally
created new terms because with existing words “people tend to think
the old way,” while new words produced new ideas (2004).
The fourth job description applies to this chapter, so we will skim
over the first three before discussing the fourth in detail. We need
the first three to place the fourth in context. The newsflow manager
is like television’s executive producer with the added perspective of
helicopter vision to oversee all stories in all media. This ensures that
individual stories receive whatever resources they need. This manager 155
chooses the most appropriate way to cover a story. The storybuilder
is like a television field producer or newspaper editor who supervises
individual stories (often more than one at a time), coordinating the
various staff for each specific story. The newsresourcer is a data specia-
list who collects and distributes information from archives, databases,
the Internet, and other sources for all journalists and editors in a
newsroom. In summary, the newsflow manager concentrates on the
overview of the story, the storybuilder focuses on the experience of
the story, the newsresourcer provides the context for the story, and
the multimedia journalist provides the content.
The multi-skilled reporter understands the strengths and weak-
nesses of each medium. He or she is skilled at interviewing and collect-
ing still images, video, and audio. This reporter can edit those sounds
and images, and can write stories to be distributed across multiple forms
of media. With breaking news, the first reporter at the site needs to be
able to capture as much information as possible in as many media forms
as possible and then be able to deliver the story immediately. Con-
vergence researcher Augie Grant noted that freelancers have always
had this combination of skills and carried them “onto the battlefield
and into remote regions, sometimes being a sole witness to a story that
can and should be delivered across media.” The multi-skilled reporter