DIGITAL STORYTELLING!

TBO.com. Since it began operations two years ago, the 120,000-square foot, $40million dollar News Center has attracted both national and international attention as a“model for media convergence, where print, broadcast and online media combine thedepth of newspapers, the drama of television and the power of the Internet to betterserve customers.” Located in a single building, the News Center is the only convergedmedia operation of its kind in the world. According to J. Stewart Bryan III, MediaGeneral’s chairman and chief executive, The News Center had in just one year ofoperation “…learned to provide unsurpassed news coverage and unprecedentedadvertising opportunities” (Financial, 2001). What makes Media General unique,according to Gil Thelen, the Tribune’s executive editor and vice president, “is that thisis the only place in the country where you have a newspaper, television station andonline division under one roof.” Here the assignment desk, or superdesk, “…is thenerve center of the converged operation. Staffers from WFLA, TBO.com and theTampa Tribune sit next to one another, keeping tabs on what each is doing” (Gabettas,2000, p.26).Less than a year after Media General began operation, and in an attempt to competewith the giant News Center, the St. Petersburg Times and Gannett-owned CBSaffiliate, WTSP-Channel 10, agreed to showcase each other’s news and features (tworivals working together). “Under the agreement Times reporters and columnists willappear on the air to discuss stories,” and they will also “look for joint sponsorshipopportunities for community events and will explore other promotional possibilitiessuch as connections between websites” (Huntley, 2001).The difference between WFLA, the “converged” stations in Tampa, and WTSP, the“converged” operations in St. Petersburg, however, is that WFLA is completely ownedand operated by the same company and is located in one building while WTSP hastwo different owners. Additionally, the St. Petersburg Times is located in one part ofthe city while the television station WTSP is located in another. Nevertheless, thesethree Tampa-St Petersburg operations all compete in the same media market providingnews and information to the viewer. In this study we investigate and discuss thecharacteristics of convergence, how the local television news affiliates in the Tampa/StPetersburg market use convergence in a newscast, and whether convergence is of benefitto the viewer.Literature ReviewConvergenceLike it or not, convergence is the way of the future. Scholars define convergence as the“coming together and blurring of lines between various forms of communication”(Head, et al.,2001). Convergence takes place in journalism when a company “owns orhas negotiated a partnership with more than one media platform in a national or localmarket. For many media practitioners, these partnerships are referred to in manydifferent ways. The primary words used to describe convergence are “synergy,” “mixedmedia-transfer,”“branding,” “brand-extension,” and “multimedia job shifting.”Regardless of the words used to describe it, convergence is a way to leverage thestrengths of print, broadcast and the Internet to gather and distribute information. Inthis way, broadcast, online, and print products are no longer seen as competitors but asa continuous reporting process.Convergence also, theoretically, “saves money on the newsgathering side because youno longer need separate reporters for your newspaper, TV station and website; a story iscovered only once. Additionally, convergence makes money on the advertising sidebecause the content is “distributed more than once, reaching separate audiences inprint, broadcast and online media” (Anzur, 2001).There are some studies examining the impact of convergence on local television newsas it pertains to web content (Chan-Olmsted and Park, 2000; Anzur, 2001) and thereare many studies looking at the newspaper industry’s relationship to convergence or atthe content of web sites for television news. There are also a few studies that focus onhow new technologies affect traditional journalism practices. For example, Zavoina andReichert (2000) argue that as newspapers embrace new media, photo editors will becalled on to conceive news strategies that can serve many media platforms. Otherscholars advocate the development of a new kind of journalism, A journalism thatbreaks away from previous practices while retaining a traditional set of news values(Fredin 1997; Lule, 1998; Pavlik, 1998). These types of arguments give credence to theconcept of ‘job shifting’ or the need for new journalists to have a strong set of newsvalues and to be skilled in both print and broadcast news practices. Here it could beargued that those news values begin with a strong sense of news content, morecommonly referred to as ‘newsworthiness’ or ‘gatekeeping’.When discussing gatekeeping in relation to convergence and television news,however, a distinction between ‘news gathering’ or content and ‘news processing’ orproducing (the function of putting together the product for presentation) must bemade. Nearly forty years ago Gieber (1964) argued that news people functionaccording to institutional demands. Assignment editors and managing editors drive thecontent, while producers decide what the content will look like on the air. Moresimply, “news is what news people make it” within the context of their function. (ascited in Wickham, 1989).From a practical perspective, a recent study examined why newspaper publishersplace their newspapers’ content on the Internet. The authors concluded that theprimary reason for putting newspapers on the World Wide Web was to gain morereaders (Peng, Naphtali, and Xiaoming, 1999). Herein lies the primary reason formedia Convergence—that is, to make money. Reid Ashe, CEO for Media General,spoke before the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication(AEJMC) in August, 2001. He said “We’ve got to pay the bills” and convergence“allows us to increase our ad sales.”When looking at television news and its relationship to the Internet, University ofFlorida researchers studied 300 local TV news websites and found these sites unlikelyto excite Internet users. These broadcast news websites were “heavy on text, short oninteractive features,” and the researchers concluded that TV stations were “repackagingmaterial from their newscasts instead of generating original web content.” Anzur(2001) agrees and posits that there is “plenty of evidence to suggest that most TVstations have neither ignored nor embraced the challenge of delivering meaningful localnews coverage on their websites.” While we were able to find numerous studiesinvestigating Internet content in relation to newspapers (Chan-Olmsted and Park,2000 ) or web content in relation to television in general ( Ferguson and Perse, 2000),at the time this study was under investigation, no studies could be found specifically24Feedback February 2003 (Vol. 44, No. 1)BEA—Educating tomorrow’s electronic media professionals 25