Convergence

Media teachers need to prepare students for the reality of journalism in the 21st Century

by Gary Clites

Originally published in the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund's Adviser Update, Fall 2009

The true mass media began in the mid-to-late 1800’s when improvements in paper production and printing technology allowed the price of newspapers to fall to a level that allowed the working class to afford them. Guglielmo Marconi is credited with inventing radio in the late 1800’s, but it was the creation of radio networks in the mid-1920’s that caused that medium’s entry into mass communications. Television, invented in the 20’s, reached national audiences in the early 50’s. The Internet, while it had existed in one form or another since 1969, didn’t break into the public consciousness until the World Wide Web gained popularity in the mid-90’s.

From the time each of these media came into existence, they worked in isolation. Print journalists studied separately from broadcast journalists. Television reporters learned completely different skills from radio reporters. In the field, when a media event happened, print, television and radio reporters all rushed to the scene and worked independently to file their reports. Throughout the 20th Century, the media functioned as separate entities, all covering the same stories in different ways.

In the 21st century, “convergence” has become the buzzword of the communications industry. Convergence is the concept that, in the new media world, the different communications entities are coming together to become one unified medium. This is partially driven by new technologies, and partly by the fact that modern communications companies are likely to own newspapers, radio stations and television stations, often in the same market. Why should they pay separate reporters to cover the same news in the same town?

Today, a newspaper reporter might show up at the site of a major automobile accident to investigate his story. Soon as he arrives, the radio station his company owns might contact him to arrange a live report from the scene. As he goes on the air for them, he gathers information for both his print report and his radio interview. As he interviews sources at the accident, he pulls out a small video camera and shoots some basic footage of the scene. Pulling out his cell phone, the reporter writes a quick Tweet, informing his followers about the accident and related road closures. After reporting on the radio, he writes his article, and uploads it, along with the video he’s shot. The newspaper posts the article on its website, along with the video the reporter shot on the scene, and a link to the podcast version of the radio report the reporter created for the radio station. Returning to the office, the reporter creates a blog entry telling readers about the entire reporting experience.

The reality of modern journalism is that the students we train must be able to write for print and internet publication, to shoot and edit video, to comfortably appear on traditional and Internet radio, and must be able to report on their work by blogging and Tweeting.

Despite this, most high school journalism programs continue to train students as though the traditional forms of print, radio, television and Internet media still existed. They don’t. Today, the media really are converging into one entity that uses all the various communications forms to create and express the messages we produce. This creates new challenges with which all of us in school media need to deal.

Does this mean that newspaper, broadcast, yearbook and Internet classes need to collapse into one unified class? Not necessarily. The reality in the current media world is that reporters still specialize in one medium. That said, no matter their medium of specialty, reporters are now being trained to be masters of all media. Knowing the Internet will bring all the media together, colleges of journalism are training students to be masters of the whole journalism world, not just their own narrow specialty.

What does that mean to us? It means print journalism teachers need to train their students to shoot and edit video. Broadcasting teachers need to train their students to write Internet stories to accompany the visuals. And all students need to learn to blog new content and to incorporate video into their blogs. By necessity, this means print, video and Internet journalism teachers need to work together to train their students in the realities of the new converged media world.

What does the long term future hold? While I, personally, don’t believe that print media will ever go away, we are moving toward a world in which people will carry around a box of some sort that will contain, or be able to access, all their media content. The “black box” theory of media futures has been criticized by some who point out that hardware – computers, laptops, Ipods, televisions – keep diverging in size and nature. This misses the point that the theoretical media “black box” is not hardware, but a container of software.

What, then, will the future “black box” be like? It is likely that in the future, everyone will carry a device containing all their personal music files, video, documents, records, media links, etc. They will be able to plug this into any computer, television, speaker, etc. to access everything they are interested in. Linked wirelessly to the Internet, they’ll be able to access the Internet, watch their favorite TV shows and movies, and access news and information.

As journalism teachers, it’s our job to prepare students for this future communications reality. We need to train students to create material that can cross media and still inform and entertain readers and viewers. We need to prepare students to succeed as journalists in the new converged media of the 21st Century.

© Gary Clites, 2009