Page 17 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

What Is Convergence and How Will It Affect My Life?

Dr. Juan Antonio Giner prefers the analogy of the circus to describe
convergence. He suggested that newspaper companies in the early 21st
century were experiencing what happened to the circus business half
a century earlier. “The one-man circus became a one-ring family circus
and the one-ring family circus became the three-ring family circus.”
Giner said most forms of newspaper and television convergence were
more like multiple independent operations than pure collaboration.
That is, different family circuses with different cultures shared the
same tent, but in each ring they still were acting as a single circus. Real
convergence only occurred when circuses mixed animals and people
under the same tent and appointed a “three-ring master,” he said. “My
best advice is this: go to Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus
and there, not at Florida newspapers, you will see the Greatest Conver-
gence Show on Earth. They are the real integrators, not the U.S. news-
papers that still are in the era of three separate rings” (Giner, 2001a).
This book will argue that convergence coverage should be driven by
the significance of the news event. Larry Pryor’s definition discussed
earlier in the chapter noted that convergence occurred in the news-
room as staff worked to produce “multiple products for multiple plat- 7
forms to reach a mass audience with interactive content, often on a
24/7 timescale.” That is a fine definition. If pressed for a simpler def-
inition, we would argue that convergence is about doing journalism
and telling stories using the most appropriate media. The importance
of the news event should dictate the depth and type of coverage, and
influence the size of the team involved. Multimedia assignment editors
will decide on the most appropriate medium for telling the story. (See
Chapter 10 for examples and case studies of how this works in the real
world.) A major explosion downtown may require a team of still pho-
tographers, editors, video journalists, online specialists, and reporters.
A routine media conference with a business leader may need only one
reporter. Kerry Northrup set up the Newsplex (the prototype multiple-
media newsroom set up to explore the technologies and techniques
of convergence) and was its first director (see www.newsplex.org).
In 2004 he became Ifra’s director of publications, responsible for all
five editions of the prestigious industry journal, newspaper techniques.
He noted that assignment editors (the people who allocated stories to
reporters) were the key people in convergent journalism. That is why
they are discussed so early in the book’s structure.
Why is convergence emerging? Several forces, working together,
render this form of journalism possible. The main factors are the