Convergence
Newsletter
From
Newsplex at the University of South Carolina
Vol. IV
No. 6 (December 5, 2006)
Commenting
on Convergence
By Melissa
McGill, editor of The Convergence Newsletter
Gil
Thelen, a world leader in convergence or as he prefers to call it,
multi-platform journalism (We’ve considered changing our name but The
Multiplatform Journalism Newsletter isn’t quite as catchy…) reflects on his past experiences
with The Tampa Tribune and Knight-Ridder and discusses some difficulties
newspapers presently face.
This
issue is representative of the Newsletter’s goal to publish a diversity of
topics surrounding convergence. Take a look at the big picture with Thelen, get
some practical advice from Klipstine, read about a unique application with
Jeffers and find out how to learn more at Newsplex Summer Seminars.
View past
newsletters at http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/convergence/.
Melissa
McGill is working toward a Master of Mass Communications at the University of
South Carolina. Contact her at convergence-editor@mailbox.sc.edu.
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Feature
Articles
Rogues,
Rascals, Nostrums and Hard Truths
For
Effective Communication Focus on the Receiver Not the Sender!
Are Blogs
The New Papyrus For Gnosticism? An Exploratory And Descriptive Study Of
Gnosticism In The Blogosphere
2007
Newsplex Summer Seminars for Faculty Announced
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Conference
Information
Media
101: Creating the Future by Understanding the Past
Creating
Communication: Content, Control and Critique
Info
Services Expo 2007
Expanding
the Definition of Convergence and Integration
Convergence
and Society: Media Ownership, Control, and Consolidation Call for Papers
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
---------------Feature
Articles
Rogues,
Rascals, Nostrums and Hard Truths
by Gil
Thelen, former publisher of the Tampa Tribune
(Editor’s
note: The following article is a portion of Thelen’s remarks at USC’s 2006
Buchheit Family Lecture on October 26, 2006. His full remarks can be found at http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/newsann/Fall06/Buchheit/.)
My name
is associated with a third C word beyond change and culture. That word is
convergence, meaning the organizational junction of print, video, digital and
sometimes audio journalism. I find the word convergence isn’t very descriptive
or very useful. I prefer to talk about multimedia journalism, now increasingly
referred to as multiplatform journalism.
For those
of you not familiar with the story, what we did in Tampa was construct and operate
the first news structure in the U.S. with a newspaper newsroom, a TV station
and an online portal under the same roof. The three — The Tampa Tribune,
WFLA-TV and Tampa Bay Online — have a common owner, Media General of
Richmond. Newsplex here in Columbia, a joint venture of the University and
IFRA, operates on the same multimedia premise as the News Center in Tampa.
The
premise is that more and more media customers — yes, customers —
want news, information and entertainment when, where and how they desire, not
when, where and how it is convenient for a media outlet to deliver it. The
multimedia news organization is able to customize content delivery to serve
multiple tastes, whether the mechanism is ink on paper, broadcast, web, blog,
vodcast, podcast or whatever technical device is coming next. The key element
in the equation is content, its quality and convenience. The delivery mechanism
is secondary to combining news and information gathering resources to produce
verified, credible, useful and authoritative content that is distinguishable
from that of competitors.
I believe
we succeeded in demonstrating not only the viability of multimedia publishing
but its necessity in the fast changing information marketplace. Tribune
journalism is quicker, more energetic and more visual due to the close
association with online and broadcast. WFLA-TV content is deeper, wider and
more authoritative because of the partnership with print. Tampa Bay Online has
broadened its lead as the preferred regional portal. Total audience for Media
General content in the Tampa Bay marketplace has increased, as has advertising
revenue attributable to convergence. WFLA-TV is Florida’s most watched TV news
station.
What’s
the logic of multimedia or multiplatform publishing? I’ll go back 15 years to a
chilling and foreboding comment made by the chemist brother of my managing
editor, Paula Ellis. Paula asked him why he didn’t subscribe to a newspaper. He
said: “The information I need finds me.” Again: “The information I need finds me.”
Fast forward to 2006 and the comment — reported by another Tampa Bay
newspaper — of Stephanie Garry, a young woman who edits the Independent
Florida Alligator at the University of Florida: “… because we have been raised
on the Internet, we see all of this as — that the media caters to our wants
and needs whenever we want.”
The words
of the Baby Boomer Charlotte chemist and the Gen Y Gainesville editor capture
the new media reality: more and more customers — especially young ones
— expect information content to be custom catered just for them —
and to be free; technology has exploded, bringing multiple delivery devices.
The meaning is clear to me: newspapers must evolve to be the umbrella brand
that houses the traditional print sheet but also custom products such as city
magazines and local health publications, niche publishing such as youth lite
newspapers, video and text narrowcasting to handheld devices, increasingly rich
and useful web sites with distinct identities jampacked with the information
customers desire to navigate their increasingly complicated lives.
Gary
Pruitt, chairman and CEO of McClatchy newspapers — the new Carolinas
colossus with papers in Raleigh, Charlotte, Rock Hill, Columbia, Myrtle Beach,
Beaufort and Hilton Head, gets it right when he says: “I do think that
newspapers have a strong future, and it lies in the fact that they will be or
are the last mass medium in each local market… (publishing) small niche
products or direct-mail programs may seem nitty-gritty or competing at the low
end, but it's that kind of business activity that will sustain the high-end
journalism in the core."
That high
end journalism in the core must get a whole lot better…..fast. Too much of it
remains predictable, bureaucratic in perspective, overly long and irrelevant to
the daily lives of citizens and customers. If editors and their newsrooms must
dial up their energy, innovation and connection with customers and community,
so too must their publishers and corporate bosses provide the necessary resources.
The roll
call of newspapers cutting their newsroom staffing has become numbing: New
York, Boston, Dallas, Baltimore, Orlando, Los Angeles, to name the largest
ones. The editor in Dallas, Bob Mong, has my favorite new age sound bite to
explain his 20% staff reduction: “I am trying to rescale the paper in a digital
world.”
Content,
remember, is king and our customers collectively aren’t stupid. Ultimately, I
believe, they will choose the media brands that look out for their interests,
get the facts right, care about their communities and deliver the goods in the
most convenient and accessible ways. Jim Knight, one of founding brothers of
Knight newspapers, put it more quaintly, more eloquently, perhaps naively,
three decades ago: “If we are fair, if we are accurate…if we judge the news
carefully in proportion to its importance, its interest and service, the
readers will be with us. Some days they will despise us. Some days they will
love us. But be fair and they will read us.”
The
cost-cutting that is reaching muscle and bone in many news organizations is due
in large part to unreasonable profit growth demands by the investor community.
My former AP colleague Conrad Fink, now at the University of Georgia,
calculates that newspapers average about double the 11% profit of Fortune 500
companies but are hammered by what he calls “completely unreasonable” investor
demands. “Wall Street knows only one mantra,” he says, “more, please, more.” I
agree with his assessment.
Phil
Meyer, the Knight professor at the other Carolina, is right to say “the key to
(future prosperity) … is a stronger journalistic product...and this is what the
industry is missing right now. Instead, they're doing the opposite, trying to
save their way to prosperity by cutting back on the product.”
It was
those insatiable investors who drove my esteemed former employer — Knight
Ridder — out of existence. What an incredible shame! The Knight-Ridder I
experienced for 20 years cared deeply about journalism excellence and public
service. John S. Knight put profits in the right perspective: "We believe
in profitability but do not sacrifice either principle or quality on the altar
of the counting house." This viewpoint animated the company for several
decades after Jack Knight’s death.
When
Knight-Ridder bought the State-Record Co., the marching orders were clear:
improve the quality of the papers as well as improve their bottom-line
performance. I’ll never forget Jim Batten’s visit to Columbia shortly after I
joined The State. Jim was a Knight reporter and editor who had risen to CEO of
the company. He cared deeply about how great journalism could strengthen the
communities his newspapers served. Jim asked me what it would take to elevate
the State newsroom to a new level of excellence. I said our most immediate need
was an investigative team costing at least $200,000 a year. He approved my
recommendation on the spot. Other investments in our newsroom followed.
Jim’s
untimely death from brain cancer in 1995 would mark the beginning of the end
for Knight-Ridder. Until then, the company insisted on having a journalist as
one of its two top officers. The pairing of a business-side leader with an
editor to run the company produced a balanced and open organization that was a
magnet for top talent, the key ingredient for enterprise success. Jim’s
successor, Tony Ridder, did not appoint an editor as his No.2. Tony’s
background was business, not news. The balanced leadership team was gone
forever from Knight-Ridder.
I am not
suggesting that editors are paragons of all virtue. They do however tend to
bring an outlook that encourages healthy internal debate, favors a long-term
perspective and rigorously champions journalists’ first amendment
responsibilities. The best editors understand leadership. And confident,
steadfast leadership at the highest level was conspicuously missing when the
financial wolves attacked Knight-Ridder.
Knight-Ridder
also lacked the two-class stock system that has so far buffered the New York
Times, Washington Post and Media General from the most vicious forms of
investor assault. But I am unconvinced that the two-class stock system affords
any real protection against the financial attacks that will inevitably come. I
have witnessed top executives in two-class stock companies outdo executives in
unprotected companies genuflect to stock analysts and abandon strategic
thinking at the first sign of profit trouble. Stay-the-course strategic rigor
and courageous leadership are essential for any company that hopes to transform
itself into the multimedia powerhouse I talked about earlier.
What does
that leadership look like? It’s David Zeeck in Tacoma telling fellow ASNE
editors to quit whining about new demands and, as always has happened, find a
way to fit new responsibilities, such as writing a blog, into their inevitable
65 hour week. It is Tom Fiedler, executive editor of the Miami Herald, issuing
this command to his newsroom: "We are beyond being satisfied with
incremental change and giving polite head nods toward other media platforms. We
are going to execute fundamental restructuring to support that pledge. Every
job in the newsroom — EVERY JOB — is going to be redefined to
include a web responsibility and, if appropriate, radio.” It is Los Angeles
Times rank-and-file editor Bob Baker writing: “If newspapers are going to die,
as most smart people seem to think, let's go down swinging. Let's go down like
the Texans at the Alamo. Let’s publish the best, most interesting, most
audacious stories we can, on our own terms. Let’s not be businessmen. Let’s be
artists. Let’s put our art - the stories that we love to write, edit and
publish - on the market and see who buys it.” I don’t agree fully with Baker’s
sentiment, but I love his fire, which we desperately need more of.
Is
returning to private ownership an answer to those insatiable and unreasonable
investor demands of today? The Philadelphia newspapers will be ones everyone
watches on this one as a group of local business figures navigates private
ownership. Instinctively, I’d like to shout go team go! My experience flashes
up caution signs about certain kinds of private ownership, however. Those very
same Philly newspapers were dreadful rags under the private owner who sold them
to Knight-Ridder, Walter Annenburg. The bondholders and bankers who provide
private owners the means to finance improvements in their papers can be as
brutal task masters as Wall Street stock investors. Recently, those new Philly
owners ordered deep staff cuts, citing demands from their bankers in the face
of advertising declines. And for every Anniston or St. Petersburg, there’s
Santa Barbara, the current soap opera of a private owner running a good
newspaper into professional and community disrepute. Michael Kinsley recently
warned in Time magazine about the civic and professional dangers of people who
got rich in other businesses buying newspapers as play things: “As a rule, rich
people don’t buy expensive toys for other people to play with.” By that he
means mere staff and community to play with.
No, there
are not any easy roads away from the current crisis facing all traditional news
organizations. Part of the answer is fully embracing the need for multimedia,
multiplatform innovation in content delivery. Another is quickly diversifying
our portfolio of products to gain niche audiences and revenues. Yet another is
transforming our content to address fully our customers need for relevant,
authoritative, unique local news, information and entertainment. Newspaper
Next, an important innovation project at the American Press Institute, puts it
this way: “The land rush to meet local information needs has barely begun. If
newspapers see the opportunities and commit the necessary resources, they can
become the preferred providers of a wide range of community, consumer, civic, recreation,
entertainment and other information. This will enable them to serve their
communities in new ways, attracting new audiences and serving new business
customers — a natural fit with their time-honored civic mission of
helping communities lead better lives through information.” Finally, the answer
is all about talent and leadership, men and women willing to fight to attain
the strategic vision of vigorous, enterprising news and information
organizations that are essential for democratic government.
Like Jim
Batten, I continue to believe in newspapers and their vital role in a
democratic society. As he so eloquently and inspirationally put it,
“newspapers, well edited, well published, are wonderfully situated to be
instruments of helping America find its way, solve its problems and seize its
opportunities.
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For
Effective Communication Focus on the Receiver Not the Sender!
By Dr.
Thomas Klipstine, University of South Carolina
While
most usability studies tend to center on the technological capabilities of the
Internet and World Wide Web, a major aspect of usability research is the focus
on the user’s goals rather than those of the producers. As communicators,
practitioners or educators, we should embrace this concept because usability
research suggests that we can enhance the effectiveness of our messages if we
adopt usability principles in our writing and focus on using a scannable,
concise, and object writing style in our messages.
The literature
on usability research notes that the vast amount of material appearing on Web
sites is written no differently that produced for paper and the result is less
effective communication and that there are differences in the writing for the
electronic medium. The two most cited differences in writing for the Internet
are:
Specifically,
past usability research suggests that in writing for the electric medium there
are three guidelines that should be followed in preparing material for
electronic distribution:
A recent
content analysis of electronic material I conducted found that we are not using
these principles in our writing and unfortunately the result according to
usabilty research is less effective communication.
For
example, my analysis of 50 corporate news releases found that the amount of
text for an electronic release compared to a paper-based release has not been
reduced but has increased. The
average length of the news release was 651 words compared to a paper-based news
release with an average length of approximately 500 words. However, the study
did find that average paragraph in a news release was 62 words, well within the
suggested format of 100 words per chunk of information. But in terms of
graphics the study found that photos were only used in four percent of the
documents and only five of the releases studied, 10 percent, contained either a
chart or a graph.
While
highlighted material makes it easier for the reader to skim the material, the
study found that only 16 percent of the electronic releases used headings in
the text, 14 percent listed information in a bullet format, four percent used
boldface type, and six percent contained hypertext. A major advantage for an
electronic document is that because it is a computer based technology, it is an
interactive medium. However, the study found that in terms of hypertext 94
percent of the material studied contained no hypertext, or active links
embedded in the text of the material.
In summary, the study suggests, that we as senders are
still focused on the encoding of the material and are not considering how the
material is being used by the receiver. Using corporate news releases as an
example, we as communicators are still following the traditional communication
process and have yet to realize the importance of considering the user’s experience
in the development of our communications which would result in improved
communication effectiveness.
For additional information on this topic, I suggest
visiting Jacob Nielsen’s Web site (www.useit.com). Nielsen is considered as a
leader in the field of usability studies and is cited in almost every study of
usabilty.
Thomas
Klipstine presented this research at USC’s Convergence and Society: Ethics,
Religion and New Media held October 19- 21, 2006. For a copy of the complete
paper, contact Thomas for a copy of the complete paper : Klipstine@sc.edu
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Are
Blogs The New Papyrus For Gnosticism? An Exploratory And Descriptive Study Of
Gnosticism In The Blogosphere
Dennis
W. Jeffers, Ph.D. Central Michigan University
Over the
past three-to-five years interest in two phenomena has gained momentum:
Gnosticism and blogging. For those
who have been following the development of research and comment on convergence
and new media, the increased interest in blogging comes as no surprise. Most
estimates place the number of blogs near the 60 million mark.
What may
be surprising to some is the increased interest in Gnosticism. However, fans of
the Matrix film trilogy and The Da Vinci Code will be familiar with many of the
basic tenants of Gnosticism. Most recently, the National Geographic Society
showcased the archeological and biblical findings related to the Gospel of
Judas, one of the Gnostic gospels. Briefly, Gnosis is loosely defined as
“knowledge” or “insight” and Gnostics believe that knowing one’s self at a deep
level provides humans with knowledge of the Divine. Further, Gnostics believe
that humans have been cut off from the Divine Mind--but that each person
carries a spark of the Divine within. Humans can be reconnected with the Divine
by igniting that spark with the help of a teacher—such as Jesus—who
is not necessarily uniquely human and divine.
What do
blogs and Gnosticism have in common? Essentially, both bloggers (compared to
the “mainstream media”) and past & present Gnostics (compared to past &
present forms of “mainstream religion”) are associated with diversity,
individualism and a sense of anti-establishmentarianism. So, the purpose of this
study is to begin an exploration of whether blogs serve many of the same
communication functions for contemporary Gnostics that papyrus did for early
Gnostics.
To launch
this exploration, four clusters of research questions were formulated to
measure the scope of discussion of Gnosticism and religion in the blogosphere,
as well as obtain measures of the number of “Gnostic” bloggers and their
posting activity. Using measurement tools available on the blog search engine
Technorati.com, a purposive sample of Gnostic blogs was collected from April 6th
to April 20th, 2006. This time frame was selected in order to “tease
out” references to Gnosticism during a span that included the Easter
observances and the roll-out of the National Geographic Society’s Gospel of
Judas.
The
results of this investigation reveal that there were an average of 77 posts per
day dealing with the subject of Gnosticism. This contrasts with an average of
nearly 5,000 posts per day for the subject of religion. Further, during this
time period the list of “self-tagged” Gnostic bloggers remained stable with 20
different persons. Also, the relative ranking of these bloggers by “authority”
(sites “linked to” the most by other blogs are sites with the most authority)
also remained stable during this time period. Perhaps most importantly, textual
analysis of posts on the Gnostic blogs with the most authority revealed that
these blogs are iconoclastic both in tone and content.
Two major
conclusions can be drawn from the results of this exploratory study. First, it
is clear that there is a presence of Gnosticism in the blogosphere, but it is
not a major component at this time. Secondly, however, those Gnostic components
of the blogosphere that do exist tend to “synchronize” with the concepts of
diversity, individuality and anti-establishmentarianism. To that extent, there
does seem to be a match between the medium and the message.
In this
case, if there is a good match between the medium and the message, why are
there are so few self-tagged Gnostic bloggers? The answer may be due to a
combination of two factors. First, it is possible that there just aren’t that
many Gnostic bloggers. Second, and more likely, our current tools for measuring
“categories” of bloggers is too primitive at this point to identify all who may
fit a specific set of criteria. For instance, Technorati.com requires that a
blogger use the “rel-tag microformat” in order to be associated with a specific
label or topic. While a high percentage of bloggers do use this format, not all
do.
Obviously,
these methodological problems cause difficulties for researchers who are
attempting to get their arms around blogs in this “new media converged world.”
For instance, six months after the data collection for the study outlined
above, a replication of the measurement process showed that the number of
Gnostic bloggers had more than doubled. Currently, it is impossible to tell if
that increase is a “true” one, or merely a result of a refinement in the
measuring procedures.
Nevertheless,
enough evidence has been collected in this study to suggest that a continuation
of the investigation of how blogs fit into the larger context of use of media
by special populations (such as Gnostics) is worthwhile.
Dennis
Jeffers presented this research at USC’s Convergence and Society: Ethics,
Religion and New Media held October 19- 21, 2006. Contact Dennis for a copy of
the complete paper: Jeffe1dw@cmich.edu
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2007
Newsplex Summer Seminars for Faculty Announced
By
Augie Grant, executive editor of The Convergence Newsletter
Faculty
from all areas of journalism and mass communication are invited to share the
Newsplex experience during the 2007 Newsplex Summer Seminars. The University of
south Carolina College of Mass Communications and Information Studies is
offering three summer seminars in 2007 ranging from a broad overview of
convergence trends to more specific training in video, Web publishing, and
content management. The seminars include:
May 14-18 Teaching
and Research in Convergent Media
May
28-June 1 Web
Publishing in Convergent Media
June 4-8 Convergence
Software Bootcamp
Tuition
for each five-day seminar is $750, and includes all seminars, books, and
materials related to training, as well as lunches and local transportation from
the host hotel to Newsplex. For online registration, detailed descriptions or
more information on any of these seminars, visit http://newsplex.sc.edu or contact Augie
Grant: augie@sc.edu or 803.777.4464.
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---------------Conferences
BEA Call
for papers
Media
101: Creating the Future by Understanding the Past
April
18-21, 2007, Las Vegas
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Texas
Tech University Call for Papers
Expanding
the Definition of Convergence and Integration
April 19
& 20, 2007
Lubbock,
Texas
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/masscom/about/newsstories/convergentcallpapers.pdf
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57th Annual Conference of the International Communication
Association
Creating
Communication: Content, Control and Critique
San Francisco, CA, May 24-28, 2007
http://www.icahdq.org/conferences/index.asp
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60th
World Newspaper Congress/ 14th World Editors Forum
Info
Services Expo 2007
June 3-6,
2007, Cape Town, South Africa
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Convergence
and Society: Media Ownership, Control, and Consolidation Call for Papers
University
of South Carolina October 11-13, 2007
Submission
deadline (postmark) is June 15, 2007.
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---------------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
Melissa McGill
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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