November 2009 Convergence Newsletter

Given the speed with which digital media have become part of our lives and the accompanying publicity, it's easy to understand how we might forget that such convergence is not necessarily widespread throughout all social strata.

A Knight Foundation-funded program headquartered at Newsplex, BGTIME, looks to bridge some of that divide when it comes to senior citizens. R.J. Kraft explains how BGTIME is using students to help older members of the community with technology -- the ultimate result being a richer civic dialogue for all.

Augie Grant also has a recap of the Convergence and Society Conference co-sponsored by the University of South Carolina and hosted by the University Nevada, Reno the first week of November. After two days of presentations, he concludes that social media are affecting journalism as much as the current economy is, only in a good way.

To read the entire newsletter, click here.

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November 2009: BGTIME: Building a community Web site from the ground up

R.J. Kraft, a University of South Carolina graduate student, has been integral in the creation of an original content website for a very particular demographic: senior citizens. The website, BGTIME.org, gives seniors an outlet to a new technology, as well as serving as a platform for original content written and edited by the seniors.

In his article, Kraft provides insight into not only creating a website, but also the trouble of teaching the seniors how to adapt to a new technology that could not be more foreign.

Click here to read the entire article.

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November 2009: onference highlights challenges, opportunities in convergence

University of South Carolina Professor Augie Grant gives a first-hand look at the highlights and emerging challenges in the field of convergence represented at the eight annual Convergence and Society conference.

The conference, which took place on November 5-6 at the University of Nevada, Reno, highlighted some of the issues materializing in the field that will be contested in the future.

To read the entire article, click here.

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October 2009 Convergence Newsletter

In the developed world, surrounded by cell phones, broadband Internet and video on demand, there is a fairly widespread set of frames by which people approach “convergence.”

In other parts of the world, however, the term can take on a far different meaning. It can be, as Paul Bowers explains, as simple as a cell phone hanging from a tree in a village. For us with our wi-fi, that would be primitive. For the villages of West Africa that Bowers visited with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, it is high technology.

And while there is no problem finding a cell phone on today’s college campuses, where having one seems to be the birthright of every student and where the devices themselves are becoming media centers. Convergence is upon us, and colleges are adapting with new programs and majors. Elmer Ploetz, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia, shows how a new program approaches the challenges.

Click here to read the entire newsletter.

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October 2009: Convergence in Africa: A phone on a mango tree

Paul Bowers, a journalism student at USC and winner of winner of a two-week trip to Africa with New York Times writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, discusses the challenges facing world-wide convergence.

Not only does Bowers examine the obvious problems of lack of widespread broadband Internet access, but also the more telling problem of basic communication on the continent. While convergence may seem to be rapid publication and new digital mediums to Westerners, simple communication via telephone is as far as many Africans get.

To read the entire article, click here.

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October 2009: 'More, Better' May Not Be Better, But It's Reality

SUNY Fredonia Professor Elmer Ploetz takes a look at the changes that have been made throughout journalism to accommodate more of a focus on convergence.

Ploetz speaks from first-hand experience as State University of New York, Fredonia has started from scratch with their convergence program and has made adaptability the cornerstone of their curriculum. Undeterred, he illuminates that problems that many other universities are having in emphasising convergence within the traditional journalism school dichotomy.

Click here to read the entire article.

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Convergence and Society conference coverage

Doug is at the "Convergence and Society" conference in Reno this week. He is doing some live blogging on it at his blog, Common Sense Jounalism. Here is a list of his posts that is being updated.

• News orgs still don't get it
• Slide shows, who is doing them and why
• Radio's conundrum
• Michigan as ground zero
• Newspapers in Second Life
• All things Canadian
• Thursday quick hits
  

The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #cconf09
We also hope to have excerpts from these papers in upcoming newsletters.

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September 2009 Convergence Newsletter

With each innovation, fewer technical obstacles prevent us from reaching the apex of media intertwinement.

This month's issue will address the areas of HD video streaming and the upcoming University of South Carolina "Convergence and Society" conference at the University of Nevada, Reno. These two insightful pieces by Edgar Huang of the University of India - University of Purdue, Indianapolis and USC's own Augie will surely make for good reads.

Please feel free to contact us at convedit@mailbox.sc.edu with your thoughts and article proposals.

Click here to read the entire newsletter.

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September 2009: Demystifying HD Streaming Video Technologies

Professor Edgar Huang of the University of Indiana - Purdue University, Indianapolis takes a look at the recent advances in HD streaming video technology and how it is affecting other aspects of internet progress.

In this piece, Huang articulates that HD streaming video is the backbone of convergence that, while still in the development stages, will become more important as other areas of communication advance.

To read the entire article, click here.

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Septemer 2009: The Biggest Little Conference In The World

University of South Carolina Professor Augie Grant gives a preview of the 2009 "Convergence and Society" conference, which will be heading to the University of Nevada, Reno.

The theme this year is “The Changing Media Landscape.” Almost four dozen submissions have been juried and whittled down to a two-day conference that explores the rapidly evolving state of journalism and mass media in general. The conference includes theme sessions on the nature and impact of the multitude of changes including consolidation, economic challenges, globalization, and regulatory change.

Click here to read the entire article.

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August 2009 Convergence Newsletter

It’s September, you say, so why does my Convergence Newsletter say August?

No, we haven’t put time on hold, though we wish we could. It’s simply been a time of more changes here at TCN. Combined with some technical glitches and then the inevitable rush at the start of classes, and we found ourselves staring at a calendar that had moved on.

We will be following this in a week or two with the actual September issue, led by Edgar Huang’s article detailing his important work researching effective video streaming technology. But to keep things in synch, we decided to put out the “August” issue instead of a more confusing “August-September” issue.

One change you will notice is a new editor for the newsletter. Matt McColl joins us both as a graduate student and as the new day-to-day whip-cracker, bottle-washer and keeper of the passwords. Please feel free to contact him at convedit@mailbox.sc.edu with your thoughts and article proposals. And, of course, you can always contact me.

This is our back-to-the-classroom issue, and we have three insightful pieces I think you’ll enjoy.

To read the entire newsletter, click here.

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August 2009: Preparing for a future in the convergence journalism world

South Carolina graduate Holly Fisher tells the tale from the frontlines of an ever-evolving journalism world and what she would and would not do differently.

Fisher provides a template for other journalism students and how to react and adapt to that new journalism world.

Click here to read the article.

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August 2009: Preparing Students for an Increasingly Freelance Journalism Career

David Weintraub a writer, editor, photographer, and educator based in Aiken, S.C., outlines an experimental course he is teaching that is designed to give communications students a firm grounding in business basics and entrepreneurship.

To read the entire article, click here.

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August 2009: Responsible Journalism in a Social Media World

Nicole White provides insight into the ever changing social media world and how journalism should adapt responsibly.

First it was blogs. Then came the rise of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and mySpace. Now, “lifestreaming” is taking hold with sites like Tumblr and Posterous that allow easy posting of an almost stream of consciousness mélange of facts, observations, pictures, videos, etc.

With this seemingly exponential rise in news sources, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine which stories have responsible journalistic coverage and which were fabricated or embellished to provide more excitement. While newspapers and news anchors have been delivering sensational headlines for years, with the advent of Internet news it becomes ever more difficult to figure out where the news coverage takes liberties.

Click here to read the entire article.

June 2009 Issue Now Available

Cyber social networking is helping to fuel the current Iranian protest against recent election results.  But with Iran’s government trying to stem the opposition’s mobilization by actively removing opposition Web sites and attempting to slow down social networking portals such as Facebook and Twitter, the world is being deprived of information concerning this major political movement. Iranian censorship of the Internet is not unique.  The Chinese government tried to shut down dissidents’ online use at the time of Tiananmen. Other nations face such roadblocks to cyber information. This issue of The Convergence Newsletter offers two articles examining problems of Internet access in Ethiopia. We also present a study focusing on India’s use of media, examining how and where convergence in that country takes place.

Click here to read the June 2009 Issue.

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June 2009: Commentary from the Wrong Side of the Digital Divide

Fulbright Scholar Alice Klement provides a view from what she calls the “wrong side of the digital divide.” Her article offers insight into Ethiopia’s technology shortfalls, which she says interfere in the advancement of media convergence and are compounded by governmental censorship of Web sites.

Click here to read the full article.

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June 2009: The "Imprisoned" Internet of AAU

Addis Abada University graduate student Sileshi Yilma addresses student concerns about the Ethiopian university's censorship of Web sites that are important tools in the research of social and political issues.

Click here to read the full article.

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June 2009: Meeting Media Needs: What You Learn When You Ask Your Students Questions

Dr. John Cokley of the University of Queensland presents quantitative findings from a 2008 convergence journalism workshop in Delhi, India. Participating journalists from across India provide insight into media consumer needs and just how those needs are being met. 

Click here to read the full article.

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June 2009: Conferences and Training

Read the conference and training schedule of the June 2009 issue here. 

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May-June 2009 Issue Now Available

This May-June issue of The Convergence Newsletter looks at how convergence is serving some local communities.

Leading off is an interview with Mike Orren, founder and president of Pegasus News, a Dallas-Fort Worth online publication founded in 2005. Pegasus offers people the opportunity to localize their news, and, if they desire, to be unfettered citizen journalists, reporting the news as they see it. Orren tells The Convergence Newsletter that to be a successful online news source you need to offer your reader more than just news.

Doug Fisher of the University of South Carolina, and executive editor of TCN, says you can save the money you'd spend on some of those "secrets of social media" training sessions. He explains some simple truths he has learned from creating Hartsville Today, a three-year-old experiment in online community news and social networking.

Finally we bring you Douglas Starr, a former Associated Press journalist and now a media professor at Texas A&M, who stresses the importance a free press plays in today’s society. Starr encourages readers to seek out all forms of media and apply it daily in making informed social decisions. He says a free press serves communities and aids all in becoming better citizens.

Click here to read the May-June 2009 Issue.

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May-June 2009: Community Companions: Pegasus News and Dallas-Fort Worth

Mike Orren is the founder and president of Pegasus News, a Dallas-Fort Worth online news site. The Convergence Newsletter interviewed Orren and discussed with him how Pegasus News is incorporating citizen journalism in the coverage of both local and regional news.

Click here to read the full article.

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May-June 2009: Building Community Online

A lot has been learned from Hartsville Today, created by the University of South Carolina journalism school more than three years ago in partnership with a twice-weekly newspaper and with a New Voices grant from J-Lab. The site now has about 1,600 registered members in a market area of about 20,000, and far more people in the area visit the site regularly, based on our IP address logs. University of South Carolina Professor Doug Fisher discusses ways in which newspapers can utilize digital media to interact and reach out to readers.

Click here to read the full article.

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May-June 2009: The Future of the U.S. and Newspapers

The United States is in jeopardy. Many newspapers have gone out of business and the rest are in deplorable condition. If the news media shut down, the United States will no longer boast government of the people, by the people, for the people. The government will be in charge because there will be no free criticism of the government, no uncensored report on what the government is doing. Douglas Perret Starr argues there are three things that must be done to save newspapers.

Click here to read the full article.

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May-June 2009: Conferences and Training

Read the conference and training schedule of the May-June issue here.

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April 2009 Issue Now Available

If there's one thing that has characterized recent trends in media – convergent or otherwise – it's "change." The latest issue of The Convergence Newsletter explores changes in media, from the traditional to the cutting-edge, with a dose of optimism that might surprise you.

Read the April 2009 issue of The Convergence Newsletter here.

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April 2009: Reinventing a Journalism Career in the Digital Age

Wendy Parker joined 15,000 others among the ranks of former newspaper workers last year, but rather than lament her situation, Parker has embraced the change. Optimistic and encouraging, her story can serve as a model for those looking for life after newspapers.

Click here to read the full article.

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April 2009: Modeling Demographic Predictors of Content Creation

Sharing some research initially presented at last fall's Convergence Conference at USC, Bartosz Wodynski and Jessica Smith of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill discuss research that helps us understand and anticipate who are the most likely groups to create and share content online.

Click here to read the full article.

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April 2009: Be Careful what You Wish For in 2009

Times are certainly tough for newspapers, but that doesn't mean editors and publishers can't adapt to the changing landscape and meet today's challenges head on. That's the message offered by Tom Griscom, editor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press in Tennessee.

Click here to read the full article.

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April 2009: Book Announcement – Understanding Media Convergence: The State of the Field

Bringing together theoretical and research perspectives from a wide range of convergence researchers and commentators, Understanding Media Convergence: The State of the Field, edited by August E. Grant and Jeffrey S. Wilkinson, is now available from Oxford University Press.

Click here to read the rest of the announcement.

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April 2009: USC Convergence Conference Goes West

The University of South Carolina’s annual Convergence and Society conference is moving west for the second time in eight years. This year’s conference will be hosted and co-sponsored by the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, Nov. 5-6.

Click here to read the rest of the announcement.

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April 2009: Conferences and Training

Read the conference and training schedule of the April issue here.

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February 2009 Issue Now Available

After a too-long hiatus (TCN executive editor Doug Fisher explains), The Convergence Newsletter returns for 2009 with more material culled from October's Convergence Conference at USC.

Read the February issue of The Convergence Newsletter here.

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February 2009: Goodbye Convergence, Hello 'Webvergence': The Decline of Broadcast-Print Partnerships in an Increasingly Online Media World

In the early days of convergence, the newsroom of the future was envisioned: all manner of media platforms – newspaper and television, mostly – sharing information, staff, and resources all under the same roof.

Has this panned out? Mostly not, suggest Drs. Susan Keith of Rutgers University and Leslie-Jean Thornton of Arizona State University. Keith and Thornton interviewed scores of TV and newspaper managers to find out the degree to which such hotly anticipated partnerships ever came to fruition.

Read the full article here.

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February 2009: The Root of ‘Empowerment’ is Power: An Examination of Political Engagement and the Web

What has been the political impact of the Internet in the United States? On the heels of a history-making presidential campaign, this is not just a fascinating but an important question.

Laurel Gleason of Ohio State University examines the matter and suggests we may have only just begun to scratch the surface.

Read the full article here.

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February 2009: Taking the Future of Journalism into Our Own Hands

Over the years, much of the academic study in the area of journalism has consisted of investigations of and about journalists and journalism – yet, as Dr. John Cokley of Australia's University of Queensland points out, there has been precious little happening in studies for journalists and journalism.

Cokley proposes turning the lens of study to show the journalist’s point of view. How the future of journalism turns out could depend on it.

Read the full article here.

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February 2009: Conferences and Training

Read the conference and training schedule from February's issue here.

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