In this digital age, journalism seems to be becoming more and more “converged”. Different media platforms are getting together, even the traditional ones and the ones that were not seen hand-in-hand before. Of the three types of convergence, technological and journalistic convergence were experienced during the news days, although not fully. The true mission of converged journalism is to address the growing fragmented news consumers and the consolidated news outlets. Thus, it is only truly convergence when the concept applies to the news itself, the production and the delivering of it.
Many of the times, however, convergence merely revolves around the delivering, i.e. transforming from one format to another using the same materials. For instance, posting a story in print onto a web page. Convergence needs to be more than that. There should have been the coming together of different journalists working on different platforms and making use of the strengths of each medium. For example, a story could be covered by a TV and a print journalist at the same location at the same time. Although court stories were generally done this way, for other stories, it was mostly about throwing everything together after all reporting was done. Nonetheless, there are many occasions when the convergence mindset was used when planning on how to cover a story, e.g. online is best for interactivity, TV/Radio for intermediacy and online news, as print, should provide a more detailed report.
Convergence at its best brings the best bits of journalism together, but at its worst, can lead to a rather messy journalistic operation. To succeed in converged journalism, journalists must learn to adapt, acquire multimedia skills and communicate well with fellow crewmembers.
Throughout the news days, I played the role of a reporter, which I think is a challenging and rewarding experience. Overall, my main strengths are my confidence in technical skills, my research skills and my willingness to chase up for interviewers.
Firstly, I feel that I was able to make good use of the multimedia skills that I had acquired, including editing, filming and using the Buzz website effectively. Especially when it came to filming on location, the confidence in technical handling would give me more time to concentrate on the journalism side of the story. Convergence is all about bringing different platforms together, thus the more things you are good at, the better your work will be.
Secondly, my research skills helped me to add more content to some seemingly lifeless stories. For instance, with online news, I managed to get more facts and figures from various resources to give readers a wider picture. Researching could also lead to finding out new angles or new stories. For example, by looking through national news, I was able to pick up some potential stories that could be localised.
Thirdly, chasing people for quotes could be a rather frustrating task. I did try my best to make contact with as many relevant people as possible. However, the short time scale sometimes made it impossible to get enough or quality interview materials. Again, some researching could help here. For example, when doing a story on the Boscombe reef inspection by three universities, I tried to contact the relevant department/people from all the three.
On the other hand, I was not quite clear about the idea of convergence sometimes. This means I did not fully adopt the convergence “mindset” in order to produce news, but only to deliver it. There was a lack of co-operation between reporters working on different formats. For instance, when covering a story for online or radio, I did not think much about picture opportunities, and perhaps the same applied in other situations. This might have resulted in some rather disconnected presentation of work.
I sometimes relied on press releases to dig up stories, which could hamper the originality of news. Although sometimes, it was difficult in the time given to chase up people for original quotes or no one was available to comment, press releases should be used as starting points rather than main sources. However, sometimes press releases went uncovered by news agencies and in those cases, I made use of them, although with not much originality.
Another thing to point out is the fact that sometimes I did not communicate well with the editors or other members of the team. This might be the reason why I sometimes felt the lack of true convergence. Although I quite often took the initiative to find stories or story leads, I did not always catch up with team discussion or planning, which is why I sometimes missed out on some assistance from other members. Most of the time I managed to get my work checked and approved by the editor/sub-editor but on some occasions, due the shortage of time, I published stories without prior notice, which I needed to be careful about as to avoid editing them again and again.
Throughout the news days, I started to grasp the concept of convergence, which would help me adapt to the work of journalists in reality. My multi-media skills and knowledge were put into practice, which gave me a chance to both brush up and acquire new things. In order to get even a better grip on converged journalism, perhaps I should have shown more cooperation and communicated more with other team members in order to share resources or work together. For instance, I could have asked my editor to get reporters from other groups to work on a story together, which I only experienced once.
In addition, I also learned about time management, which is vital in a rushing work environment. Being able to prioritise some stories over others as well as keeping up with the news beforehand help a great deal in saving time. However, there were times when there was not much left to do due to the size of the team and everything had been covered. In reality, this might not happen as journalists are now doing almost everything from filming, interviewing to editing. Taking part in news days helped me try out different bits and put the pieces together.
The importance of originality was emphasised during the news days as well. To compete in the world of journalism, this is one of the most important things to remember. It was all about finding a new and interesting angle to lift a dull story, to find original stories where no one thinks there is one. Perhaps in the future I should have a notebook with a list of local places with a potential for original ideas, e.g. library, local shops etc.
I hope as I go along the course, there will be even more advanced technical knowledge to be learned so that my work can be truly multi-media. On the journalism side, I hope to keep up with the idea of convergence through co-operation and self-motivation. Preparing for possible news stories and contacts in advance will probably give me more time on the day to create an original piece of work.
I should also focus on the target audience’s needs and interests, in other words, make stories relevant to them. The more people can relate to a story or have some kind of opinion on it, the more they would want to know more through different media platforms, thus, convergence will serve its purpose.
