The University of Florida held a conference this week on media convergence. Florida is the nation's capital for this movement, with more converged newsrooms than any other state. Why? Apparently because of an absence of unions, according to Mark Glaser, who attended the conference.
My school, Brigham Young University, was one of the first in the nation to try out the idea, but our operation has never been fully converged and is now, in fact, diverging to a greater degree. Similarly, I've seen converged operations in Chicago and in Florida that are really converged.
Technology and money are driving convergence. It's happening whether we want it to or not. However, it may not be what many of us originally thought -- that journalists would be able to report for all media. The cultures are just too different; the skills to broad to fully master. Anyone who says they are fully converged is lying -- that was one of the findings presented to a group of faculty at a recent Poynter session on convergence. |
