It’s a familiar refrain, the constant need for traditional news organizations need to retool to a form that embraces convergence. But some Virginia Commonwealth University students learned that this idea still has little traction on the front lines of news organizations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter
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.
Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter
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.
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.
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.
Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter
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.
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.
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.
Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter
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.
Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter
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.
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.
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.
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.
Read the conference and training schedule of the June 2009 issue here.
Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter
