Convergence in the newsroom: It's not one size fits all, editors told

Last Updated: Thursday, May 3, 2001 | 12:24 PM ET

CBC News

Convergence – the merging of the Internet with television and newspapers – doesn't mean simply repurposing the same content for use in each form, a senior editor at the vanguard of the movement warned Wednesday.

"It's not one size fits all," Donna Reed, the managing editor of the Tampa Tribune, said to the Canadian Association of Newspaper Editors meeting in Toronto.

The Tribune is owned by Media General, which also owns a Tampa online venture, TBO.com, and WFLA, the NBC television affiliate in the Tampa area. The reporters in the three newsrooms cover stories armed with digital video cameras and digital tape recorders – tools necessary so stories can appear in print, on TV or on the Internet.

Keith Wheeler, Orlando Sentinel

But working that way doesn't necessarily come cheap. It cost $40 million US alone to build a facility to bring all three of the Tampa media outlets together under one roof.

"Convergence is not about saving money," Reed said.

It has also not resulted in more people picking up the paper. In circulation studies conducted since the various media outlets started co-operating, the Tribune has not seen its circulation rise.

Tampa Tribune Managing Editor Donna Reed

But if people are not reading the paper, the Tribune is using its other media outlets to reach them, Reed said. "Are we going to lose (readers)...or are we going to own them on a different platform," she said.

Keith Wheeler, the associate managing editor in charge of multimedia at the Orlando Sentinel, co-ordinates the sharing of information among the Sentinel, its Web site, a radio station, and a 24-hour cable news channel.

When reporters go out into the field, they're told to "prepurpose" content, not repurpose it, Wheeler said. That means thinking ahead about how to present a story via the newspaper, TV or the Web, he said.

In Canada, several corporations are making similar efforts to bring media lines together. Telecommunications giant BCE Inc. bought the CTV television network and the Globe and Mail newspaper, and the Sympatico-Lycos Web portal, while CanWest Global Communications scooped up 50 per cent of the National Post, along with several of Hollinger Inc.'s Canadian daily newspapers and Internet properties.

The CBC.ca Web site posts video and audio content from the CBC's television and radio networks in 14 Web "zones", and generates its own content. And CBC is working with other news organizations. The CBC and the Toronto Star recently co-operated on a cross-media feature on retirement that involved television, radio, newspaper articles, and the Web sites from both organizations.

Readers concerned about stories coming from three media sources all controlled by one corporate master shouldn't be worried, Reed said.

"It's not a merger at this point. We make independent news judgements," she said.

Reed said part of her role as managing editor at the Tribune is to protect her television critic, who is not well-liked at the television stations just a few floors below the paper's newsroom.

Multiple ownership won't change the ethical practices of the news organizations, Wheeler agreed.

Gary Maavara, a vice-president at CanWest Interactive, said when a CanWest Web site has an unfavourable story about the National Post, a situation that has happened, it was treated like any other story.