Convergence
Newsletter
From
Newsplex at the University of South Carolina
Vol.
III No. 11 (May 9, 2006)
Commenting
on Convergence
By
Jordan Storm, editor of The Convergence Newsletter
While
the traditional tenets of journalism continue to guide the profession,
an ever-growing number of multimedia platforms are forcing the journalism
industry to adapt in order to stay relevant. This issue of The Convergence
Newsletter highlights three forward-thinking
individualsÕ thoughts on convergence in the field.
Dick
Moore, vice president of news at WKYC-TV in Cleveland, shares some of the
challenges of working with multiple media in a broadcast newsroom, while
Tom Priddy, online content manager of www.GoUpstate.com, the Web site of Spartanburg,
S.C.Õs Herald-Journal, details how multimedia implementation
can result in better storytelling. Lastly, Cheryl Harris, associate professor
of advertising at the University of South Carolina, outlines the state
of interactive advertising brought on by multimedia platforms. Her piece,
in particular, foreshadows some of the issues journalists and audience
members alike will face as media platforms continue to create additional
opportunities for interfacing between the public and the product.
View
past newsletters at http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/convergence/.
Jordan
Storm is working toward a Master of Arts degree at the University of South
Carolina. Contact her at convergence-editor@mailbox.sc.edu.
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Feature
Articles
The Next
Level
Accidental
Convergence
Interactive
Advertising
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Conference
Information
Newsplex
Summer Seminar Series
ICA:
Networking Communication Research Conference
AEJMC
Convention
SPJ Convention & National
Journalism Conference
Convergence
and Society: Ethics, Religion and New Media
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
---------------Feature
Articles
The
Next Level
By
Dick Moore, vice president, news division, WKYC-TV, Cleveland.
(Editors
Note: In Fall, 2006, Dick Moore will join the University of South Carolina
as an associate professor in the broadcast sequence.)
Nearly
a decade has passed since the movement began within this and many other
television newsrooms to launch new media under the same roof. What at first
was a simple Internet brand extension has grown in complexity and importance
to include other new media and competition head-on for station resources.
New media
expectations are now growing even larger as overall mainstream television
audience levels grow smaller. But the trend in mainstream media is to trim
staff positions as revenues flatten or decline. ThatÕs putting more work
on the shoulders of fewer people and pushing the outer limits of what might
be expected in a world of converged media responsibilities.
So far
weÕve been successful in re-engineering newsroom workflow to leverage more
daily content onto the Web. Newscast producers rotate through the day taking
hourly responsibility for updating Web content; reporters carry picture
phones to capture images that accompany versions of stories they file specifically
for the Web; photographers shoot video and then create their own Web photo
galleries; and anchors and some beat reporters create Web logs and host
Web chats. Is that kind of effort going to be enough, and will our current
dependence on converged job responsibilities be sufficient to keep us competitive
as we push even farther with development of new media?
My sense
is that it wonÕt be. The Fox television station group recently announced
that it would re-launch Web sites of its owned and operated station group
by hiring separate Web staffs, some with as many as five editorial positions
and others dedicated to sales and marketing. Their stated intention is
to re-brand station Web sites to become a much more personal ÒMyFox.com.Ó The
sites will be heavy on daily local news video and will include national
and international content from FoxNews.com, FoxSports.com, Sky News and
RottenTomatoes.com. Until now, FoxÕs Web development has lagged behind,
but itÕs apparently about to jump ahead.
The significance
of a plan to create a separate Web staff is in the recognition that there
are finite limits to what can be accomplished through multi-tasking. In
spite of best efforts, there are only so many tasks that can be accomplished
at one time. And when the chips are down, television-trained producers
tend to default to what they know best. The Web takes a back seat. As long
as thatÕs the case, its dependability and growth will be limited.
In some
respects the Fox development represents a swing of the pendulum back in
the direction of where we first started. A separate and specially-trained
staff was a necessary resource to get started in new media. It might be
a necessary part of taking things to the next level.
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Accidental
Convergence
By
Tom Priddy, Online Content Producer, www.GoUpstate.com and
the Spartanburg Herald-Journal
This
is a story of accidental convergence. Or, accidentally, a story about convergence.
It's
nothing more than a tale about a guy who likes writing stories, playing
with new toys, and occasionally flying without a net. And if somewhere
along the line you see that as a backward way of my getting into convergence,
then so be it. I can't take any credit for planning it out. It just happened.
As a
young reporter 30-some years ago, I covered a two-county area for The Greenville
News, and that meant taking my own photos when the story required it. And
it often did.
It also
meant getting the film to the Greyhound station in time for the 5 o'clock
bus to Greenville. Once there, someone in the lab had to process and print
my film, decipher my scrawled caption information ("I think I got
a picture of the mayor around frame 6 or 7") and pass it along to
the copy desk. All in a day's work.
Jump
to last month at my job at the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, where I'm now an online producer.
I went to an open house at West End Field in Greenville, a new ballpark
where the local Class A club would be playing. I covered the story, took
photos, interviewed the principals – and gathered some natural sound
with my new toy, an Olympus DS-2 digital recorder.
I wrote
a story for print, passed along one photo to the sports editor, then edited
the audio and photos and created an audio slideshow for our Web site, GoUpstate.com.
Seems
like a logical progression to me. The toys are a little newer now, but
the goal is no different than it was when I was a cub reporter: it's all
about the story. What's the real story, and how can we tell it in an interesting
way so that the largest number of people can see it (or feel it or hear
it)? We just have more ways of getting the story out these days.
When
I worked for Knight RidderÕs new media guru Roger Fidler years ago, he
tried his best to educate me in the ways of academia, scholarly writing
and long-range planning. But it didn't really take. If it had, I might
be writing about convergence, newsroom restructuring and workflow. I'll
have to leave that to someone else.
Here's
what I do know: we have some amazing new ways of telling stories today,
and I'm going to enjoy trying them out. But to me, that doesn't mean I
always have to do everything myself, nor does it mean that every reporter
has to become a photographer or sound engineer.
Here
are two examples: First, Herald-Journal business writer Susan Orr wanted to write a Sunday piece
on Jamie Simpson, the spokesperson for the Rug & Home Store in Gaffney,
a job that turned her into a media celebrity in upstate South Carolina.
Susan wrote the story and gathered natural sound, Herald-Journal photographer Mike Bonner shot a
slew of photos (coached a bit my me, who said "shoot everything"),
and I put it all together for an audio slideshow. In addition, there was
the traditional Sunday business piece with photos, an RSS feed and a blurb
in our e-mail newsletter. The entire package was teased on the GoUpstate
front by our new media chief, Andy Rhinehart (http://www.goupstate.com).
Second,
our statehouse reporter, Robert W. Dalton, went to the Gulf with some church
volunteers who spent their spring break repairing houses damaged by Katrina.
Andy and I asked him to take more photos than he would need for print,
and to record some interviews and the sounds of the construction. Again,
I put the audio slideshow together. The result was the same as with the
Jamie Simpson piece: a very good story told in several ways using the technology
we have available and involving a large number of journalists (http://www.goupstate.com).
Although
I enjoy doing everything myself (I once got kicked out of a composing room
for meddling with the page proofs), I don't think every journalist has
to become a jack of all trades in order to take advantage of all the great
new ways we have to distribute our stories. But you have to be willing
to try new things and establish strong working relationships.
And all
of us just have to understand that not everyone wants to sit down with
a cup of coffee and a newspaper in the morning any more. We have to find
those readers wherever they've gone. That's our challenge, and it's going
to be a lot of fun figuring it out. Somebody else can do the white paper
about it, though.
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What
is Interactive Advertising?
By
Cheryl Harris, associate professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communications,
University of South Carolina
With
varying degrees of permitted response and functionality, interactive advertising
offers viewers the opportunity to interact with ads by requesting additional
information, expressing opinions and/or making purchases. Interactive advertising
must be sufficiently persuasive to generate a response from the viewer.
Increasingly, it appears that effective advertising in the convergent media
age is advertising that has been customized or personalized to fit the
current preferences of the viewer. In general, advertisers have learned
that Òone size fits allÓ advertising generates much lower response rates
than targeted ads. As the digital platforms for Interactive Television
(ITV) or Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) come online, some advertisers
are already experimenting with various types of customization and personalization
that will be coupled with interactive response functions.
There
are several years of successful interactive advertising campaign implementations
in European and British ITV and more than a decade of accumulated knowledge
acquired from Internet advertising experience that has emphasized interactivity
as a key function from its inception. Internet advertising practitioners
believe that the campaigns that receive the highest response rates are
also those that take advantage of personalization options such as collaborative
filtering, behavioral targeting, and other types of profiling and customization.
It is
worth noting, however, that there is no clear agreement on what constitutes
interactivity, or that it is compelling quality for users (Harris, 1997).
Despite the apparent success of interactive advertising on test platforms
such as ITV (Lee, 2005), there remain many unexamined assumptions about
interactivity and the value of personalization that require much more rigorous
theoretical frameworks and evaluation. At least one study that examined
the perceived value of personalization and interactive content reported
Òmixed results,Ó finding that too much choice diminished impact (Varan,
2004).
Types
of Interactive Advertising
There
are numerous categories of interactive advertising executions varying by
medium. Internet advertising alone has several modes, from banner advertising,
pop-up/pop-under, interstitial (an ad that appears as an interim display
between a page request and the delivery of the requested page), and search-engine
advertising (ad messages appearing within a page of search results, and
which ideally relate directly to the keywords/topic for which the user
is searching.) The popularity, and effectiveness, of search engine advertising
has displaced the majority of ad dollars in other types of Internet advertising
for the moment. Similarly, interactive television has developed various
types of advertising messages, offers, and strategies, such as the ÒDedicated
Advertiser LocationÓ (DAL) button on a handset, for which premium rates
are charged to advertisers (Morrisey, 2005; Lee, 2005.)
If we
categorize interactive advertising in terms of the response desired, or
capability delivered, rather than the form of the ad, we have a more functional
typology identifying the function and description of interactive advertising:
= Jump:
Viewer may go to a location (i.e., a Web site, product catalog, order form,
etc.) via a link; can include sponsored content.
= Tag:
Tag a message, offer, site, or piece of content for later access.
=Direct
Response: Viewer interaction results in a direct purchase opportunity or
may trigger a follow-up sales call.
=Poll:
Engage viewer through poll or quiz question(s.) May feed back results in
real-time to further engage viewer.
=Gaming:
Engage viewer through gaming activity. May include incentives or rewards.
=Opt-in
Rewards: Viewer response patterns are aggregated and often displayed onscreen;
response targets are rewarded with various incentives, such as discounts
or free merchandise.
=Targeted:
Viewer profile (demographic, psychographic, behavioral, etc.) triggers
customized message and/or offer.
=Authorial:
A variation on gaming; viewer is invited to contribute to, or reshape content
in real time, as in interactive storytelling applications; be partnered
with a specific offer or in a Òsponsored contentÓ format, with links to
information or offers.
A central
premise of Internet advertising practice has been that the longer the viewer
is encouraged to remain in the advertising and/or retailing environment
and, ideally, the more they engage with the content/features of that environment,
the more likely they are to buy. Similarly, the interactive television
model values Òdwell-timeÓ and correlates it with higher response rates
(Lee, 2005).
Interactive
advertising development and implementation across multiple platforms has
been slower than expected for a variety of reasons, including the uneven
distribution of broadband access, inconsistent audience research results
and viewer privacy/security concerns. Targeting and analytics technologies
that would facilitate interactive advertising have also been considered
immature by many experts.
Still,
the ability of interactive advertising to connect consumers directly and
immediately to ad messages in a variety of highly customizable formats
continues to fuel development of the medium. Most major advertising agencies
now have at least one subsidiary unit working solely on interactive advertising,
and in the U.S. agencies dedicated to advertising applications in the coming
ITV environment, such as Ensequence (headquartered in Portland, Oregon),
are also cropping up. In 2005 and 2006, advertisers reported moving
more dollars to interactive advertising, away from traditional media, which
contributed to renewed interest in interactive advertising innovation.
Industry
Standards
Traditional
advertising/marketing industry trade groups, such as the Direct Marketing
Association (DMA) and Association of National Advertisers (ANA), have established
guidelines for interactive advertising practitioners. Within the past 5-10
years, new industry associations, such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau
(IAB) have emerged to facilitate the development of the medium.
These
guidelines cover a wide variety of issues, but dominant among them are
practices associated with creative execution, lead generation, and privacy
protections. Some industry practitioners believe that the aggressive, and
sometimes fraudulent, tactics of e-mail marketers have tainted the interactive
advertising industry. Other concerns include the use of network-delivered
software spiders, bots, agents, and Trojans that collect consumer data
without the knowledge of the user. Consequently, industry standards for
legitimate interactive advertising have striven to emphasize consumer protections.
Industry
guidelines include a focus on Òopt-inÓ or permission-based advertising,
whereby consumers receive ad messages and offers only in response to a
specific request. This rules out indiscriminate ad placements and ÒspammingÓ
and, in effect, forces the advertiser to integrate consumer profiling and
targeting efforts within the interactive environment. Other guidelines
have been definitional: what constitutes an ÒimpressionÓ in interactive
advertising terms, what is a valid Òclick throughÓ and what may be considered
a ÒsaleÓ (IAB, 2006).
Establishing
working definitions in the interactive advertising vocabulary is important
because of the different monetary values placed on various types of interactive
outcomes. So far, advertisers are willing to pay the highest rates for
ad placements that result in direct sales, followed by click throughs
(which may include follow-up requests) and impressions.
Challenges
Ahead
Response
rates for interactive advertising are likely to be challenged by increased
demand for consumer control of media delivery. For example, digital video
recorders (DVRÕs) allow viewers to time-shift programming and to avoid
interstitial advertising.
Some
studies suggest that Ò92% of ads are skippedÓ by DVR users, although TiVOÕs
research suggests that number is lower, but still in the range of a substantial
70%+ of viewing activity that involves skipping ads (Borland, 2005). Foote
Cone & Belding recently released a commercial for the Kentucky Fried
Chicken chain that allows viewers to Òcrack a hidden message if they play
the spot back slowly on a digital video recorder or VCRÓ (CNN.com, 2006). This
is an attempt to encourage DVR users to attend to the ads that research
has shown so many would otherwise avoid.
TiVO
was criticized when it announced in late 2004 an initiative that would
superimpose banner ads and/or commercial logos over prerecorded advertising
within shows through which the viewer was attempting to fast-forward. So
far, it has not yet implemented this concept on a systemwide scale (Chapell, 2004).
Other similar attempts to circumvent viewer ad-skipping will likely be
seen in the coming months and years as advertisers experiment with the
interactive advertising business models. At the same time, new devices
are likely to continue to be introduced that allow consumers to further
control media and to strip out advertising if desired. The pressure to
produce engaging, immersive viewer experiences that contain advertising
content that is relevant and compelling will only grow.
A recent
study released by Frank Magid Associates demonstrated that consumers who
own Apple iPods (or would like to buy one) would accept advertising in
exchange for free downloads of TV shows and other content (Oser, 2006). On
April 10, 2006, Disney announced that it would make many of its most popular
shows available online at no cost, although with especially encoded advertising
that could not be ÒzappedÓ out (Reuters, 2006). CBS recently announced
a plan to produce a 60-second program, scheduled during its evening primetime
slot, which would end each mini-episode with a Òcliffhanger.Ó The show,
to be called The Courier, is intended to engage audiences so that they
will not skip the advertising surrounding, or embedded within, the show
itself (McClellan, 2006). Ad-sponsored ÒmobisodesÓ for delivery on mobile
devices are also in active development. It is important to keep in mind,
though, that many industry observers believe that ad-sponsored content
may ultimately fail in a fully convergent, digitalized media world. Threats
include piracy, consumer-generated content, and the continuing fragmentation
of audiences.
Despite
the obvious challenges, advertisers are mostly optimistic about the outlook
for interactive advertising. One aspect of particular interest is the potential
to accurately and comprehensively measure consumer response. In a world
where content will be delivered in a Òconverged,Ó networked environment,
everything can be tracked and measured. Powerful data-mining techniques
will allow advertisers to forecast and model response and fine-tune advertising
executions with near-perfect knowledge. This would certainly represent
a revolution in how media and advertising response has been assessed in
the past. The providers of media audience data in this country, primarily
Arbitron and Nielsen, are in a state of upheaval. Currently, neither has
introduced an acceptable methodology for measuring portable device and
personalized media delivery that can be easily correlated with viewer response,
and for which their clients have been calling (McClellan, 2006; Whiting,
2006).
Advertisers
have also been concerned about flaws in ad delivery and tracking technologies
that can result in problems such as Òclick fraud,Ó or tactics by which
competitors or others can improperly boost apparent response to an interactive
ad, but which were not the result of a ÔtrueÕ consumer response. The search-engine
advertising leader Google recently paid more than $90 million to settle
claims from advertisers that its ad delivery system did not prevent click
fraud. (Newcomb, 2006).
GroupM
CEO Irwin Gotlieb told Adweek that Ònext-generation screens and digital
boxes will be enabled to produce higher ROI É and real-time optimizationÓ
and, consequently, more precise and accurate targeting of content and/or
advertising. He also noted that the industry believes that digitalization
of media delivery will Òallow us to gather data in an entirely different
way – at the census level as opposed to the sampling levelÓ (McClellan,
2006).
Lessons
learned from this kind of data could eventually allow advertisers and content
providers to apply powerful behavioral targeting techniques that would
further customize advertising messaging across several digital platforms.
These same lessons might also be applicable to journalists attempting to
add interactivity to their messages.
References
Borland,
J. (2005). What creature will succeed the couch potato? CNET News. Retrieved
December 5, 2005, from http://news.com
Chapell,
A. (2004). TiVo 2.0. Retrieved November 30, 2004, from iMediaconnection.com
CNN.com.
(2006). What's the secret of that KFC commercial? Ad designed to
make viewers slow down -- viewing, anyway. Retrieved February 26, 2006.
Harris, C.
(1997). Theorizing Interactivity. Marketing and Research Today, 25(4),
267-271.
IAB. (2006.)
Interactive Advertising Bureau, http://www.iab.net.
Lee,
J. (2005). An A-Z of interactive TV. Campaign, 13.
McClellan,
S., and Burgi, M. (2006, March 1, 2006). Adweek roundtable: Media
mixes it up. Adweek.com
Morrissey,
B. (2005, March 28). Can interactive TV revive the 30-second spot? Adweek.com
Newcomb, K. (2006).
Google to settle click fraud suit for $90 million. ClickZ News. Retrieved
April 20, 2006, from http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3590251
Oser,
K. (2006, March 7). Most consumers would watch ad for free TV download.
Advertising Age.
Reuters.
(2006). Disney to make TV shows available free on web. Retrieved
April 10, 2006.
Varan,
D. (2004, August). Consumer insights associated with interactive television.
Retrieved March 10, 2006, from http://www.broadcastpapers.com/whitepapers/Consumer-Insights-Associated-with-Interactive-Television.cfm?objid=32&pid=576&fromCategory=44
Whiting,
S. (2006, March 1). To our clients. In N. M. R. Clients (Ed.). New York:
Nielsen Media Research.
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---------------Conferences
The
University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications
Newsplex
Summer Seminar Series
June
2006
Columbia,
South Carolina USA
Two separate
seminars will be held at Newsplex in June 2006, covering specific training
in Web publishing and software operation. The seminars are:
June
12-16, 2006: Web publishing in Convergent Journalism
June
26-30, 2006: Convergence Software Bootcamp
For more
information, or to reserve a spot, visit: http://Newsplex.sc.edu or
e-mail Augie Grant: augie@sc.edu.
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International
Communication Association
Networking
Communication Research Conference
June 19-23, 2006
Dresden, Germany
http://www.icahdq.org/events/conference/2006/conf2006info.asp
Conference
registration starts January 15, 2006.
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AEJMC
Convention
August
2-5, 2006
San Francisco,
CA USA
http://www.aejmc.org/convention/
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SPJ
Convention & National Journalism Conference
August
24-26, 2006
Chicago,
IL USA
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University
of South Carolina College of Mass Communication and Information Science
and Newsplex
Convergence
and Society: Ethics, Religion and New Media Conference
October
19-21, 2006
Columbia,
SC USA
http://newsplex.sc.edu/newsplex_cfpapers06.html
Since
September 11, ethics and religion have emerged as important topics in the
study of new media. At this conference, the moral implications of emerging
media are addressed at the levels of society, culture, and the media professions.
It is a forum for scholars, media professionals and theologians to discuss
converging media from the standpoint of competing values. Papers and panels
may include institutional, content, audience, cultural, political and technological
perspectives on media from the perspective of social responsibility. Abstracts,
completed papers and panel proposals for this conference should deal with
one or more of the following four themes:
= Ethics:
Examination of current approaches to moral reasoning about convergence
= Values:
Analysis of values related to converging technologies (i.e., information
equity, privacy, diversity, etc.).
= Religiosity:
How denominations are contributing to public and policy discussion of convergence
and values.
= Media
Convergence, including convergent journalism, technological convergence
and audience behavior.
The purpose
of this conference is to provide a scholarly exploration of these issues
individually and of the connections among them. Submission may address
theory, history, media practice, social influences, cultural issues, legal
implications and effects upon consumers.
Faculty
and graduate students are invited to submit in one or more of three categories:
completed papers, proposals or abstracts of papers in progress and proposals
for panels.
Submissions
may address practical, theoretical, phenomenological, critical and/or empirical
approaches to any of the subjects listed above. All submissions will be
reviewed by a jury that will consider: 1) relevance to the conference theme,
2) the quality of the contribution, and 3) overall contribution to the
field.
Submission
guidelines:
=Electronic
submissions (Word or RTF attachments) are encouraged (send to augie@sc.edu).
=Paper
copies may be submitted: five paper copies of the submission should be
mailed.
=A detachable
cover page should be included with the title of the paper or panel and
authorsÕ names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. For
electronic submissions, the cover page should be in a separate file.
=Submissions
deadline (postmark) is June 15, 2006. All submissions will be jury-reviewed
with notification to authors and organizers on or before July 31, 2006.
For registration
and further information about this academic conference, visit the conference
Web site at: http://Newsplex.sc.edu.
Papers,
proposals, abstracts and panel proposals should be addressed to:
Augie
Grant, Conference Chair
ERNM
Conference
College
of Mass Communications and Information Studies
Carolina
Coliseum
Columbia,
SC 29208
e-mail: augie@sc.edu
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---------------Announcements/News
Publishing
a book about convergence? The Convergence Newsletter regularly publishes information
about new and upcoming books on convergent journalism. Send your submissions
to convergence-editor@mailbox.sc.edu.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
---------------Publisher
and Editorial Staff
The
Convergence Newsletter is free and published by The College of Mass Communications and Information
Studies at the University of South Carolina.
Executive
Editor
Augie
Grant, Ph.D.
Editor Assistant
Editor
Jordan
Storm Kelly Mitchell
convergence-news@mailbox.sc.edu
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---------------Copyright
and Redistribution
The
Convergence Newsletter is Copyright © 2006 by the University of South Carolina, College of
Mass Communications and Information Studies. All rights reserved.
This
newsletter may be redistributed in any form - print or electronic - without
edits or deletion of any content.
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---------------Submission
Guidelines/Deadline Schedule
The
Convergence Newsletter provides an editorially neutral forum for discussion of the theoretical
and professional meaning of media convergence. We welcome articles of
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We also accept news briefs, calls for papers and conference announcements.
Our audience is both academics and professionals and the publication
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Please include your name, affiliation and contact information with your
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The
Convergence Newsletter is published the first week of each month except January. Articles
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questions should be sent to convergence-editor@mailbox.sc.edu.
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---------------Subscribe/Unsubscribe
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