Converging For the Future

Journalism is going through a monumental shift and the way we digest the news is rapidly changing. No longer do we wait until the 6 p.m. broadcast to hear about what took place during the day. Instead, news is consumed nearly at every second throughout the day on an array of different platforms. For this reason, the Annenberg Media Center is working to take hold of this new world of news that we live in and convergence is key. 

Here, at Annenberg we have access to one of the greatest media centers in the country and it would be a shame not to fully utilize it. At the media center, we have three major news outlets that operate: Annenberg TV News, Annenberg Radio News and Neon Tommy. We also have the unique ability of being able to operate all under one roof, which provides us with the tremendous opportunity to work together across all platforms. 

By converging and sharing information with one another, we can make all of our programs stronger. Now, when I am producing I try to look at each story from the perspective of every outlet because we can all cover the story in different ways and send one Multimedia Journalist to report on the same story for different outlets. By doing so, this saves all outlets time, gives the reporter a unique learning experience, and provides our audience with different ways of digesting the news. 

Unfortunately, in our student-run media center convergence can sometimes get overlooked when we are busy focusing on meeting a deadline for our own outlet. I think the leaders of the media center have done an amazing job bringing all the platforms together, but there is still work to be done. In particular, I think each outlet could do a better job by linking between each other on similar stories. This way we could highlight how we each covered the story differently and provide our audience with more information. 

Broadcast, radio and online news all have different strengths and weaknesses. By converging, we can highlight each outlet’s strengths and give our audience the best opportunity to digest the news.