Converging with convergence

Everyone has heard of convergence being used to mark the transition into the future of journalism. What I didn't realize however is that convergence isn't that new of a term.

In 2000, three media outlets in Tampa, Fla. were moved into the same building to work side by side with each other. On page five of "The Art of Editing," Gil Thelen, the former senior vice president and executive editor of the Tribune, confesses that the process of converging operations wasn't easy. I could assume so, considering in every market in the country media outlets are seemingly trained in a "think of yourself first" attitude. Competition in the media has been a staple of the art form since it began.

This leads into chapter two of "The Art of Editing," where the actual need to respond to change is mentioned on page 20.

I can look to the internship I just completed as a prime example of this. At the Tri-County Times, management was tired of the newspaper looking stale and out of date. They gave the Wednesday edition a facelift to make it more colorful and stand out to readers. On the inside, stories were focused more in features rather than reporting on meetings.

With the help of younger writers such as myself and John McKay, there was a push to put video online with certain stories to bring readers to the website. I believe that even though readers were already heading online to comment on the public opinion page, this would help the transition to a fully online newspaper in the future. I hope it never comes to that for any newspaper, but it would be nice to prepare for it rather than be caught off-guard.