Last Updated: August 18, 2000
Printer-friendly version
Convergence
By Gil Thelen
The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune newsroom is sharing quarters with a broadcast
TV station, one of the first arrangements of its kind in the United States.
Our summary assessment after a few months together: The newsrooms coexist
well and print and broadcast journalists are learning multimedia skills
with minimal wear and tear.
Media General owns both the Tribune and WFLA-TV, the NBC affiliate in
Tampa. Until this year, the two had offices a mile apart in downtown Tampa.
The TV station needed new and larger quarters. Media General CEO J.
Stewart Bryan decided to keep the station downtown and construct a building
large enough for WFLA and the Tribune newsroom. He envisions a digital,
multimedia future for the company and wants a laboratory in Tampa.
The 121,000-square-foot structure was completed early this year. It
is adjacent to the old Tribune building, where non-news functions remain
for the paper. The new building, called The News Center, has all station
operations, the Tribune newsroom and Tampa Bay Online, Media General's
new-media organization. The Tribune newsroom is on one floor and WFLA's
newsroom is on another. Online, print and broadcast share a multimedia
assignment desk.
The joint quarters are possible because Media General owned WFLA and
the Tribune before 1975 and is grandfathered from FCC cross-ownership prohibitions.
Cooperating, not merging
The Tribune and WFLA share resources but make news decisions independent
of one another. We are careful to stress that there is no merger of the
newsrooms, although the cooperation is unprecedented.
WFLA and the Tribune first joined hands in 1992 when they highlighted
a prep football game of the week. In 1994, Michelle Bearden, the paper's
religion reporter, began regular TV reports on WFLA, and the Tribune started
sharing the station's helicopter. In the years since, the two have jointly
named athletes of the week, cooperated on election coverage and produced
a race project together, among other ventures.
We got really serious about so- called media convergence when the skeleton
of the new building rose in early 1999.
-
Step No. 1 was getting to know one another. We socialized. We spent time
together through home-in-home visits in one another's newsrooms. We engaged
Jimmy Gentry, dean of the school of journalism at the University of Kansas,
to lead us through a series of conversations and assignments that would
map our future living arrangements and establish protocols for cooperation.
-
Step No. 2 was to communicate among our staff members in every way we could
imagine. A key piece was a newsletter called The News Center, a biweekly
publication that was about ''creating a spirit of trust, shared values
and experimentation.'' The newsletter and related large and small group
meetings created understandings about language, assignments, competition,
compensation and goals.
-
Step No. 3 was intensive cross-training. Print reporters learned TV fundamentals
from WFLA professionals and experts at the University of South Florida.
TV reporters learned print skills. Photojournalists learned to be
ambidextrous with still and video cameras.
Serving news consumers is bottom line
Our purpose is to serve the changing needs of readers and viewers. They
are ahead of us in using a combination of print, broadcast and the Internet
during the day. Our rationale: Be there with news and information whenever
and however our customers need and want us to be. For breaking news, we
aim to ''publish'' on the first available platform, usually television
but sometimes online. On enterprise, we want to extend the work of our
journalists across platforms in a natural way.
The best way to give editors a sense of how convergence works in Tampa
is to sample the February 2000 status report by Steven De Gregorio, senior
editor for multimedia, who coordinates efforts among television, print
and online platforms:
''During the past two months there have been more than 100 actual acts
of convergence. ... 'Food for Thought' was a monthlong convergence effort
that took advantage of three different platforms' unique attributes. The
print component involved four separate pieces of dietary content published
each Sunday during the month of February. The Sunday stories referred readers
to News Channel 8 and TBO.com. Irene Maher's TV content aired every weekday
throughout February. In turn, WFLA referred viewers to the TBO 'Food for
Thought' index, and each Friday made mention of the coming Sunday Tampa
Tribune content.
''The success of this effort proves how simple convergence can be if
we commit early, communicate often, and follow through. Each platform in
this case approached the content unilaterally and, in the end, the content
differences proved a convergence strength - something additional for those
customers who sampled more than one of our products.
''The same might be said for the 1999 tax project. This was the third
time around for converging on an annual income tax project. The highlights
of this year's efforts included: 99 tax tips by Scott Nelson (put up by
TBO as well), and a print story on e-filing and other ways to file penned
by WFLA's Steve Overton. Also worth noting was the WFLA phone bank of certified
public accountants who donated their time to help viewers/callers with
individual tax concerns.
''The refer boxes in The Tampa Tribune on both these projects were well
integrated into the story layouts. This created a sense of purposefulness
and naturalness, as if we've been doing convergence for a long while.
''The Tribune's Michelle Sager and WFLA's Jen Leigh dreamed up another
grass-roots piece of convergence -'FCAT - The Pressure Test.' Their look
at the FCAT (Florida's basic skills test for students) testing situation
as a basis for judging a public school's 'grade' was thorough.
''There was a live chat with both reporters involved; an ongoing bulletin
board where concerned people could hash out the issues online; and sample
test questions were online, giving Web users a chance to experience the
FCAT for themselves.
"Another success story worth mentioning is how both the Tribune and
WFLA made use of the same political polling information supplied by the
Pew Center for Civic Journalism."
Sample another report from the front lines, this by Tribune reporter
Rob Shaw on his experience with TV:
''The bottom line in the whole convergence effort is that the more you
do it, the more comfortable you become with the once-weird idea of standing
in front of a camera and babbling, instead of writing at a computer.
''Once you have a talk-back - or a squawk-back, as a Tribune photographer
recently alluded to them - or two under your belt, you feel more comfortable
at doing them. Then maybe you feel you can actually do a live stand-up
or put together a package.''
So, where are we in Tampa?
On the right track, we think. The paper is quicker and more urgent because
of our association with television. WFLA is more authoritative because
of its access to Tribune research facilities and journalists. Tampa Bay
Online is reaching further to capitalize on video and to post Tribune field
reports immediately.
We don't think we have harmed the paper by ''publishing'' on other platforms,
sometimes scooping ourselves. Whether we have improved print with the multimedia
ventures is for others to decide.
We have only scratched the surface of multimedia possibilities. Effective
translation from one platform to another is an achievement. But we have
to learn how to create unique content that stands apart from any existing
medium. That's the tantalizing prospect of multimedia work.
Thelen is executive editor of The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune.
