THE DEPTHS OF CONVERGENCE
In an era of increasing media mergers, it's important to understand what convergence is already doing to newsrooms across the country. Convergence is the process of trying to make print, TV, radio and online reporters play nice with each other when their parent company suddenly decides it can maximize resources and increase profits by making their newspaper reporter do something for their TV station, and vice versa. Trouble is, newspaper reporting has a different value system, more depth, later deadline, and longer story length than the others. One type of reporter never naturally plays nice with the others. Convergence is a painful process.

The Phoenix New Times has a column about the media convergence taking place there. My favorite example is the TV consumer "reporter" who looked to the station's partner paper for tips.

The woman held up some Republic grocery ads.

"Albertsons has 33 percent off gourmet turkey breast," she says, showing the ad. "That's a good deal."

"Safeway has this Buy-One-Get-One-Free on Kellogg's cereal. That's a really good deal."

- posted by Amy @ 2/25/2002 09:50:00 AM