Blog 5: Converging Convergences?

I didn’t expect much from a piece titled “The Meanings and Implications of Convergence.” Convergence, as Gordon acknowledges, is a buzzword that gets tossed around casually, and at Medill especially. Last year, Dean John Lavine began his post and brought with him a slew of seemingly revolutionary and radical changes (a plan he titled “Medill 2020”). Students, the same students who are supposedly of this new, digital generation and cannot remember a time without the internet, had many questions, criticisms and concerns (some of which they unfortunately kept to themselves) specifically about “new media,” “convergence” and the changes they’d bring to the journalism degree they’d be receiving.

One of the reasons for the outpouring of student concerns I believe, is confusion. At one point last spring, the Dean called a town hall meeting to address students’ questions and concerns. A friend of mine raised her hand and asked, “What exactly is meant by ‘new media’ and ‘convergence’? It seems like they just get tossed around all the time without any thorough explanation.” She was absolutely right. So when I read the title “The Meanings and Implications of Convergence,” I assumed Gordon’s arguments and explanations would fall on very tired ears: Lavine, to his credit, and much of the Medill faculty, have gone to great lengths attempting to engage us in a conversation about what those words mean, about the meaning they’ll have in our curriculum and how, well, they’re pretty important if we ever want a job in journalism.

But Gordon goes beyond a basic speculation of what a multi-platform media landscape might look like in the year 2020. He acknowledges how much has been lost in the word “convergence,” how it means different things depending on what industry one hails from and how, even among communicators, it has very different meanings. One manifestation I hadn’t given much thought to until reading this article was strategic partnerships between TV station’s and newspapers. This trend, and its intersection with the multimedia convergence we’re more accustomed to hearing about, brings up countless issues. Gordon does a thorough job of explaining the strategic and journalistic benefits of these partnerships, as well as the doubts many have. The examples he provides, however, say something, at least to me about who is benefiting from the partnerships, but it may just be my bias: many of the benefits seem geared towards the TV reporters and how the newspaper reporters can help them, not vice versa. For example, “newspaper reporters enable the TV station to provide more detail and depth in their live reports from the scene of a news events,” the sharing of newspaper enterprise reporting and newspaper reporters appearing on-air, all seem to benefit the TV station. There aren’t many examples of what a partnership with a TV station can do for a newspaper. Sure, there are lots you can think up, but I’m unclear and curious, after reading this article, as to what’s being done. If so many jobs are being cut, and there isn’t time to train reporters in audio/visual technologies, as many executives within the newspaper industry are currently bemoaning, why can’t newspaper borrow audio/visual content from the TV stations. I’m unclear as to whether this is happening anywhere yet or not.