Convergence
Newsletter
From
Newsplex at the University of South Carolina
Vol. IV
No. 2 (August 1, 2006)
Commenting
on Convergence
By Jordan
Storm, editor of The Convergence Newsletter
Tasked
with sharing their perspectives of convergence and new media from their
respective countries, in this issue Juan Carlos Camus reports from Chile and Vincent
Maher from South Africa. A review of their pieces provides the opportunity to
contextualize convergence in the global arena. David Hazinski of the University
of Georgia also shares a piece critiquing convergent broadcast journalism
perspectives.
This
issue marks the end of my tenure as the editor of The Convergence Newsletter. Thank you for allowing me to
participate in this ongoing conversation on convergence. I would also like to
thank those of you who have contributed to the newsletter or e-mailed me with
comments, suggestions and/or questions — your input was invaluable. My
work with this newsletter has been a constant pleasure.
Please
welcome Melissa McGill, the next editor of The Convergence Newsletter. Melissa is working toward a
Master of Mass Communications degree at the University of South Carolina. She will
resume coverage of international issues in the October issue of the newsletter;
the September issue of the newsletter will explore convergence and community
journalism.
If you
would like to highlight your country’s convergence and new media practices in
the newsletter, contact Melissa McGill at convergence-editor@mailbox.sc.edu.
View past
newsletters at http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/convergence/.
Jordan
Storm recently finished her thesis and is set to receive her Master of Arts
degree on August 5, 2006 from the University of South Carolina. She will begin
her doctoral studies at Syracuse University this fall.
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Feature
Articles
Multimedia,
Web-phone convergence taking off in South Africa
Advances
in online journalism in Chile: New trends in online journalism are changing the
way people consume news
Emerge,
Don’t Converge
Announcements:
Ethics, Religion and New Media to Converge in Newsplex Conference
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Conference
Information
SPJ
Convention & National Journalism Conference
Convergence
and Society: Ethics, Religion and New Media
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
---------------Feature Articles
Multimedia,
Web-phone convergence taking off in South Africa
By
Vincent Maher, Director, New Media Lab, Rhodes University School of Journalism
& Media Studies
The South
African news media are currently experiencing a period of rapid growth and internal
investment, in terms of both money and faith from business managers. This
growth, which started in late 2005, can be attributed to a steady increase in
advertising revenues and, in some cases, profits.
Matthew
Buckland, publisher of the Mail & Guardian Online, says its advertising revenues
have grown 600 percent since 2003 as a result of internal restructuring
particular to his site, increased readership and stronger online advertising
market conditions. This has led to improved investment in internal staff and
resources and the ability to expand into new areas like blogging, podcasting
and the launch of their paid-content mobile delivery system.
"Many
online media operations in South Africa are profitable, or near to
profitability, for the first time since the crash. Ironically, many are now
faced with a need for re-investment to take advantage of the growing, changing
online environment, which will again put pressure on the bottom line," he
says.
The Sunday Times, South Africa's largest weekend
newspaper, has recently introduced video journalism onto its Web site,
following the success of its citizen journalism product, reporter.co.za,
which has gathered a loyal following in the six months it has been operating.
"It's
opened up the media house to the interactivity of the Web and its audience has
noticed. Multi-media stories and reader interactive forums are topping the
'most read' list on the Sunday Times Web site each week. A consequence is that print reporters
are increasingly embracing the medium and filing reports exclusively for online
that go beyond traditional text reports," said Editor Juliette Saunders.
Current
construction of a multi-media production studio shows the group's content to
push digital initiatives and further online/mobile convergence is set to be
launched within months.
This week
has also seen the launch of 24.com, a multimedia
portal for the largest player in the South African media market, Media24 Digital. The portal mixes
traditional news media with new media formats like blogs, photo galleries and
instant messaging. The launch of 3G mobile
broadband has brought with it myriad new converged online services like the
recent availability of 14 television channels, including Sky News, available
via Vodafone Live, a 3G mobile service.
In a
recent presentation to the South African national Editors' Forum, Rachel
Stewart from the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) told an audience
of editors that mobile is increasingly becoming the key area of focus for their
online operations.
The topic
of debate at that meeting was media convergence and the future of multimedia
journalism in the country and, while it seems that the commitment is there to
begin expanding the job descriptions of online and traditional media
journalists, there is also a shortage in terms of multimedia production skills.
There are
several arguments against newspaper expansion into the multimedia field right
now. The first is that multimedia production will place additional strain on
production teams who currently seem overworked. Secondly, what remains to be
seen is whether or not multimedia formats can be monetized as easily as current
online media forms.
The
obvious solution is to develop fully integrated multimedia advertising but this
is largely based on the skill-sets available at advertising agencies. It has
taken several years for South African online publishers to establish
credibility with media buyers. They have done this largely through the
formation of the local Online Publishers' Association and the implementation of
a standardized traffic auditing system across all member products, via Nielsen/Netratings.
This
standardization, which will be particularly difficult to implement in
multimedia formats where each implementation is potentially different, has enabled
publishers to standardize the shape and size of advertising so that advertisers
can develop a single ad for multiple sites.
The mood,
however, is buoyant within the industry and many an online unit is about to take
on more staff, and multi-skilling and multimedia are at the top of the list of
requirements as the country comes closer to hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
Vincent
Maher’s Blog can be accessed at http://nml.ru.ac.za/maher
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Advances
in online journalism in Chile: New trends in online journalism are changing the
way people consume news
By
Juan Carlos Camus, new media consultant for usando.info in Santiago, Chile and
contributor to Poynter Online
While
working as a researcher at a documentation center, Claudia used to keep her
cell phone on for the purpose of making and receiving phone calls. Today, as a
journalist for new media, she uses her mobile in a different way, as a newspaper,
as well as to look how her own work has been transmitted.
Claudia
is part of a group of journalists in Chile working in new media outlets that
are quickly becoming established media. The reason behind the growing
importance of this market is the critical mass reached by cell phones in the
country. With 15 million residents, there
are 11 million active cell phones in Chile, translating to a lot of people
able to receive news, messages, photos and videos.
For television
networks such as Televisión
Nacional (a public television network) and TVUC
(the most important private television network), radio broadcasters such as Cooperativa,
and newspapers, the idea of delivering content feeds through mobile phones is
becoming commonplace, but it needs more than a little push to become reality.
Rodrigo
Guaiquil, a well known local consultant responsible for digital content at
local media networks including La Tercera, said when the popular newspaper La
Tercera began
offering multimedia messages through the mobile network this year, they didn’t
expect what happened. “We at the company and the phone operator were surprised
because of the good results of the whole operation.”
Surpassing
all expectations, La Tercera’s experiment quickly became profitable. “From the first
month of operations it has been a success,” explains Guaiquil.
The root
of their surprise may be the changing business model: customers are used to paying
for everything they get on their little screens. For journalists who made their
first steps as Web site content creators, this is very different from delivering
free news content.
Oscar
Pasten is content manager for Cooperativa, a radio network covering almost the
entire 3,000-mile-long Chilean territory. He says multimedia messages through
mobile networks have created strong new revenue streams. “This is a new
business model and we are just getting used to doing the things that return
money from the very first minute.”
Successful
Chilean media experiments
It all
began with contests related to soccer matches. Using cell phones, audience
members could send text messages trying to guess who would be the winner or the
best performer at a game. To participate audience members had to pay; in
return, they got a chance to win money. For example, during the recent soccer
World Cup, there were many contests related to guessing the final results of
important matches broadcast locally.
But as
those contests have become a routine convergence between phone and TV stations,
media outlets in Chile have continued to move beyond using the mobile platform.
One example is TVUC’s morning new broadcast. On the “3 by 3” news morning show,
which is broadcast from 6 to 7:30 a.m., audience members can send text messages
that show immediately as a text strip on the bottom of the television screen.
And if their phones (and their wallets) allow them, audience members can send
photos from their mobile phones that appear on the television screen as a part
of the TV program.
Changing
the way journalists work
Guaiquil
said La Tercera
is trying to produce content once and then reuse it many times. “You can
transfer the same contents from the Web to other platforms.”
In other
organizations, content needs to be adapted before it can be repurposed. An
example of this is El Mercurio, the most traditional newspaper in the country. El Mercurio now enables audience members to
post comments on its site, from editorial letters to comments about the passing
of a bill in the Chilean Congress.
As in the
case of Claudia — who is working now for the next generation of readers who
prefer getting their news on the little screen of a mobile phone — journalism
is changing, enabling audiences to get the news whenever and wherever they are.
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Emerge,
Don’t Converge
By David
Hazinski, Head, Broadcast News, Grady College, University of Georgia
Principal,
Intelligent Media Consultants, LLC
At a
wedding reception a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that our school, the Grady
College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Georgia, was
considering “convergence” to a high ranking CNN executive. He replied, “Doesn’t
that word just make you sick? You’d think they’d understand that was
yesterday’s trend.”
I’ve
heard similar reactions from many industry folks. To them, “convergence” is
putting together print, broadcast and Web operations into one newsgathering
engine. In academia, many administrators believe it is teaching students
everything through new departments that combine all three distributions. There
are several reasons in particular that broadcast managers dislike the word and
the idea:
=There is
no industry model. Years after we began talking about the concept, there are
only a half dozen examples of attempts at convergence, none successful enough
to convince other companies to take the plunge. On the academic side, it means
“preparing” students for “everything media” but with no tight set of specific
skills, an oxymoron for professional education.
=There is
a lingering cultural issue. Many newspaper people simply don’t like broadcast
news. They think it is cheap and theatrical and don’t want to be part of it.
Cooperation is only grudgingly given. The Web is an unattractive, geeky second
cousin they don’t understand.
=While
both print and broadcast gain advantages from Web-based expansion, broadcasters
really get little out of a marriage with print. Broadcast folks don’t end up
working in print very much, so it is basically a one-way street, not a
partnership. This, despite broadcast news’ position at the top of the
technological food chain. A broadcast story can be made into a print, Web or
radio story quite easily. The same can’t be said for a Web or print story.
=The
issue isn’t “print and broadcast and the Web,” The issue is the Web or, more
specifically, Internet-based distribution. Print and broadcast are both rapidly
losing audience to online journalism. Dozens of studies say this isn’t just
about distribution but a migration to a different kind of journalism, one that
addresses smaller, more discreet rather then mass audiences. Convergence
doesn’t address that trend.
=And, it
is a “bean counter” issue, not a journalistic one. It really doesn’t improve
coverage or attract viewers or readers; it just cuts expenses and may actually
reduce quality and drive the audience further away. Dick Moore, former vice president
of the News Division at Cleveland’s WKYC, now on the broadcast journalism
faculty at the University of South Carolina, put it well. Writing about the
multi-tasking needed for “convergence” in the May Convergence Newsletter, Moore wrote, “In spite of best
efforts, there are only so many tasks that can be accomplished at one time.”
=I have
some intimate knowledge of what Moore is talking about. In the last seven
years, our consulting company, Intelligent Media Consultants (intelligentmc.com), has helped train
journalists and assist with the design of six national television network
launches overseas. Four of them are majority owned by print companies. The
owners and executives are very smart media managers who run major organizations
and study the business. None are “converged.” All these news networks are not
just successful, but very successful, both economically and journalistically.
There is
a great deal to be learned from these launches that speaks to the issue of
convergence or perhaps against it if it is narrowly defined. Here are the top
lessons:
=Multi-tasking,
a cornerstone of convergence, has its limits. For years, I was one of the
advocates of the “one-man band” approach to news coverage. Not any more. While
my company continues to train journalists in all aspects of news production, we
no longer advocate the concept alone. The “one-person orchestra” as I like to
call it, because it now involves women and other “instruments,” has its place.
There are many stories that one person can cover for print, TV, radio and the Web,
but not all stories and often not well. The real key is the one Dick Moore
pointed out: one person can’t do all of those jobs for all of those outlets in
the same amount of time. They need more time to perform more tasks. It’s a
simple point many plans miss.
=There is
no real advantage to “convergence,” but there are some areas that can be
leveraged. HR and business functions, ad sales, graphics and some asset
management like archives can work across media within an organization.
Consolidating coverage on major stories across media can result in better
content. But jamming every news operational function together hasn’t shown
itself to be a trend worth following, particularly because of newsroom culture.
=When
news pioneer Ken Tiven and a group of consultants started the now defunct Orange
County Newschannel,
the country’s first 24/7 local news operation about 12 years ago, I worked with
the excellent Orange Country Register newspaper staff on convergence, essentially trying to get
them to think of broadcast as an outlet that could serve them and their
audience better. My most memorable moment came when a reporter stood up in a
meeting and said, “We not only don’t want to do this, we want to NOT do this.
We will make you fail.” Now that’s an attitude you have to pay attention to!
Newspaper colleagues tell me it hasn’t gone away.
=The best
way to create a new newsgathering organization for an audience that is moving
is a “foundation up” approach, not a realignment. Much of what is written about
convergence is an attempt to transition traditional print or broadcast operations
so that they include Web-based media. The newsroom culture issue and
institutional atrophy make this far more difficult than starting from scratch.
Much of the thought that has been put into convergence has been aimed at
maintaining existing news organizations as they already operate while getting
more out of staffs and migrating its work to other media, essentially double
dipping. This does not address the reasons why we have a constantly declining
number of readers and viewers. That itself needs examination. The overseas news
executives our company works with know convergence isn’t the cure for these
problems. That’s why they started new news organizations based on television
news but including the Web.
=The
solution these media executives found overseas may not work here, in Western
Europe or in some other parts of the world because of the much larger bouquet
of news products across media available in first world countries. So what
would? An approach different from what we are doing now, one both the industry
and academia need to find.
=The
print and broadcast industries, or at least the major players, need to invest
in creating some working models, preferably cooperating with academia to make
sure conclusions are well researched. Newsplex at the University of South
Carolina is a great tool, but a somewhat lonely one. The news industry has
generally not invested in new ideas or ways to find them. These businesses that
have traditionally made massive profits have spent little to nothing on
experimentation and it is coming home to roost.
The new
models can’t merely be patterned after existing Web sites or the latest trend
like blogs. The models, however, do have to have some similar characteristics:
=They
should be created from scratch, not grown out of existing operations. There is
too much of a tendency to do things the old way, what our consulting company
calls “the rubber band effect.”
=They
should include all aspects of a project, not just the planning. Technology,
training, advertising, staffing, promotion, sales and everything else involved
with a media outlet are inter-related. For instance, we now recommend that our
clients work with us to train new staffs built from new hires, and not bring in
particularly broadcast veterans (except for top managers).
=The
projects should be “real” commercial enterprises, i.e. they should aim at an
audience and try to reach it everywhere it lives … via radio, Web, print and TV
and should be run as businesses. This can be done in a college town, a target
suburban county, or a region of the country but it needs to be compared to
traditional outlets to gauge progress.
=They
should produce a discreet, differentiated product. Our company’s biggest mantra
is to offer something readers or viewers can’t get somewhere else. It has to be
appreciably different and valuable to be successful. This will mean a
significant advertising effort so that viewers and readers can find it.
=They
should be computer server based. We are running television channels on what
used to be inexpensive small business level computers. This results in much
lower capital budgets, which means lower debt service, which means a quicker
break-even and money spent on training staff instead of capital. Besides the
economic incentives, once content is in a server, it can be directed to
different media very easily. As a result, revenue and expense models are now
very different.
It should
be tracked from the very start by academic researchers. These folks are very,
very good at research yet most often perform industry irrelevant analysis for
obscure academic journals. Their great ability should be used to find the
trends and issues. The research should be economic as well as social.
We’re late
to the game. The research shows the audience is already well on its way to the
Web and individualized news coverage. Converging print and broadcast
organizations is not going to stop that trend or help us survive. What will is
creating a new offering that can be delivered over multiple media outlets to
specific audiences with relevant content. We need more information to help
develop the information products to do that and continue to lead. Media
corporations need to step up, put their money where their mouth is and create
entirely new information systems that can match news and information collecting
and processing systems to new audiences, commercially viable models that
capture the audience’s attention and earn its respect.
Academia
has an even more precarious balancing act to perform. Teaching the next
generation of journalists to report in all media will result in them having
little market value. Students must be equipped with professional skills that
will allow them to walk into a specific industry newsroom and perform a job. A
broad-based liberal arts type communication education won’t deliver those
skills nor meet the requirements of professional education. It would be like
training a doctor to know a lot about different kinds of health but not equip
him or her with the skills to cure anyone.
Journalism
schools have to change their programs so that they include two tiers: core
journalism knowledge including such subjects as law, ethics, basic reporting
and newsgathering, media business, and technology taught without industry bias,
and then a second tier where students can specialize in one form of media or
another. This second tier must include “hands on” training, the best way to
learn anything. Only a combination of these two tiers will allow them to know
about the various forms of media and also get a job in journalism and do well.
The
challenge is greater in academia because there are more factors opposing
change. All professional education focuses on socializing students as well as
teaching job skills or root knowledge. This would have to change in the first
tier. In addition, academia’s own faculty would have to adjust to the new
market by major realignments, something they will be reluctant to do. And
finally, this new kind of journalism education will mean more time learning the
skills and more money on equipment, always a problem for colleges.
Neither
academia nor the news industry has a choice though. We both have to change now.
The handwriting on the wall is in six-foot-high day-glow letters outlined in
neon. If we don’t create the engines that deliver news and information the way
the audience wants it and values it and train the professional journalists to
staff the collection and distribution of that information, we will make
ourselves irrelevant.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
---------------Announcements
Ethics,
Religion, and New Media to Converge in Newsplex Conference
Theme
sessions on convergent journalism, ethics and new media highlight the agenda for
the University of South Carolina's annual convergence conference, which will
take place October 19-21, 2006 in Columbia, S.C. A sampling of paper titles
demonstrates the range of issues explored in the conference: "Is Religion
the New Sex?," "Comparing Ethical Models of Mass Media Content to
Blogs and Mobile Media Ethics," "Creating Cyberfaith: The
Interpretation of American Buddhism Via New Media," "Lost in MySpace:
The negative news about social networking sites like Myspace, Friendster and
Facebook in Mainstream Media," "What Editors Want From New
Journalists: Converging Skills or Old School Standards?," and "A
Feminist Approach to Convergence."
The theme
of the conference, "Convergence and Society: Ethics, Religion and New
Media" was reflected in the wide range of submissions accepted for the
conference. As in previous years, the conference features multiple sessions
addressing trends in media convergence and convergent journalism, including
sessions on technologies, community journalism and contemporary issues.
The
conference kicks off Thursday afternoon, October 19, with a theme session that
includes presentations exploring issues surrounding ethics, new media and
education. Friday’s sessions explore religion and convergence, including one
full session of papers addressing the relationship between blogs and religion. The
conference closes at noon Saturday, October 21 with a session combining papers
related to teaching convergence and new technologies. The preliminary
conference agenda has been posted on the conference Web site: http://newsplex.sc.edu/newsplex_con06.html.
A
pre-conference Newsplex training seminar will provide an introduction to simple
software for creating Flash presentations for Web sites. Registration is
available at no cost to conference attendees, but registration is limited to
the first 15 individuals requesting the workshop. (E-mail Augie Grant: augie@sc.edu for more information on the
workshop.)
The
conference keynote speaker will be announced in late August. The conference is
open to any academic or industry professional. Registration for the full
conference is $125 and full information on registration and the conference
hotel can be found on the conference Web site: http://newsplex.sc.edu/newsplex_con06.html.
For more information about the conference, contact Augie Grant via e-mail: augie@sc.edu or call 803.777.4464.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
---------------Conferences
SPJ
Convention & National Journalism Conference
August
24-26, 2006
Chicago,
IL USA
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
---------------News
(Editor’s
Note: Please forgive me for my blatant puffery, but this is my last issue so I
feel a bit bold)
Called “a driving force behind important questions regarding journalistic integrity driving multi-platform news delivery,” The Convergence Newsletter was recently mentioned by Sam Ford on the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium’s Web site.
Check it out at http://www.convergenceculture.org/weblog/2006/07/the_convergence_newsletter.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
---------------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
Jordan
Storm
convergence-news@mailbox.sc.edu
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
---------------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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