November 2012: How students seek information in the age of convergence

The new technology explosion requires that media audiences learn and maintain new skills for information literacy so they can find, filter, evaluate, and use information.

In the new issue of The Convergence Newsletter, Alex Gorelik and Anton Bezuglov of Benedict College report on their experiment to determine how students seek and evaluate information. Their pilot study used T.D. Wilson's framework of information-seeking behavior to record students' choices as they searched for the answer to a question. Gorelik and Bezuglov found that students' impatience to find a clear answer can trump even their knowledge that a single information source may be suspect. Read the article, then visit the newsletter's Facebook and Google+ pages.


Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter.

November 2011: Rob Curley shows how to make digital pay

In a Skype video call to the 10th Annual Convergence and Society Conference, Rob Curley explained his strategy for doing hyperlocal and "Big J" journalism that wins readers and awards and generating the revenue to pay for it in the process. Read a recap of Curley's lively presentation at the conference in the latest edition of The Convergence Newsletter. Then join the conversation at Facebook.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2011: Case study examines newspaper use of community writers

Having residents write about their own city seems a great way for a local newspaper to cover its community – especially when the writers work for free. Until the writers and the newspaper run into a controversial issue. Writing in the latest edition of The Convergence Newsletter, Robert "Ted" Gutsche Jr. uses a case study to explore the challenges and the pitfalls one Midwestern newspaper encountered. Then join the conversation at Facebook.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2011: Storify the news

How can you train students to handle social media adeptly? Storify it, says Kelly Fincham of Hofstra. "Social media plays a huge role in journalism today, so much so that entry-level journalists are expected to work with new sources of content in ways that were unimaginable when I went into journalism in the early 1980s," she writes in the latest edition of The Convergence Newsletter. Read her account from the 10th Annual Convergence and Society Conference of how she has transformed her teaching and is helping students "make sense of it all." Then join the conversation at Facebook.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter.

November 2010 Convergence Newsletter

Web content such as video and audio used to supplement printed content or substitute for it in newspapers and magazines is a sign of convergence. As a part of Missouri Western University's Global Journalism Research course taught by Dr. Robert Bergland, undergraduates Austin Jacobs, Emily Gummelt and Todd Fuller researched convergence here and in other countries. They presented their findings at the 10th annual Convergence and Society Conference at the University of South Carolina and recap those findings here.

Jacobs analyzed the multimedia features of Mexican newspaper websites, while Gummelt studied web content of the top U.S. magazines. Fuller analyzed findings about the interactivity and functionality of newspaper websites.

Also in this issue is the latest Research for the Newsroom from Clyde Bentley, associate professor at the University of Missouri.

To read the entire issue, click here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2010: Research for the Newsroom

Clyde Bentley continues his Research for the Newsroom excerpts this month with a look at the Internet's impact on everything from the perception of newspapers to the tendency for women to consult the web before making decisions.

To read the entire article, click here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2010: A content analysis of U.S. weekly newspaper websites: Interactivity and functionality

Todd Fuller, an undergraduate student at Missouri Western State University, analyzed findings about the interactivity and functionality of newspaper websites and presents his findings in this month's issue.

To read the entire article, click here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2010: Magazines and their websites: A 2010 study

Emily Gummelt presents her findings concerning web content of the top U.S. magazines in relation to convergence. Gummelt completed the research prior to graduating from Missouri Western State University.

To read the entire article, click here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2010: Multimedia features in Mexican newspaper sites: A comprehensive analysis

Austin Jacobs, an undergraduate student at Missouri Western State University, analyzes the multimedia features of Mexican newspaper websites. Jacobs presented his work at the 10th annual Convergence and Society Conference at the University of South Carolina.

To read the entire article, click here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2008 Issue Now Available

If you couldn’t get to October’s Convergence and Society Conference at the University of South Carolina, we’re here for you. Our November issue begins our spotlight of some of the interesting presentations and discussions during the conference.

Be sure to check back with TCN, as we hope to bring more highlights from the conference in future issues.

Read the November issue of The Convergence Newsletter here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2008: The Duality of 'The Participatory Web'

As the organizing force behind USC's annual Convergence Conference, Dr. Augie Grant has, as much as anyone, been witness to the broad changes that have taken place in the study and practice of convergence over the years.

In our November, Grant offers his reactions to this year's conference and lessons learned.

Read the full article here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2008: By-product Learning in the Communication Age - Instant Message Use and Political Learning in China

With the U.S. hosting a major election in November, politics were understandably top-of-mind among some of our conference presenters – but not just American politics. Jinghui Hou, a master’s student at Syracuse University, delved into how the Chinese are using instant messaging and social networking Web sites to fuel political learning.

Read the full article here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2008: MySpace/MyVote - Young voters, social networking and 2008

This issue's second look at politics turned its attention stateside, as Dr. Tim Brown and Jasmine Jones from the University of Central Florida explored how the roles of MySpace and other social networking Web sites were expanded during the 2008 elections.

Read the full article here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2008: Conferences and Paper Calls

Read the conference schedule from November's issue here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2008: Job Annoucement - Elon University

The School of Communications at Elon University is searching for six new tenure-track assistant or associate professors, effective immediately.

Click here to read the full announcement.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

November 2007 Issue Now Available

As recent posts on this blog have indicated, last month was a pretty noteworthy one for us here at The Convergence Newsletter. With USC hosting its annual Convergence Conference, we were able to rub elbows with some top researchers (and practitioners) in the field of convergent journalism, while also shamelessly soliciting them for submissions.

The November issue of The Convergence Newsletter bears some of the fruits of that effort.

We are happy to present the first in what (we hope) will be a long series of articles by this year's conference presenters, in which they summarize their presentations and even build a little upon them. For those who attended the conference last month, consider these adaptions valuable supplements to what you took away from the event. For those who weren't in Columbia, may these summaries entice you to consider attending next year's conference, where you'll have access to a host of research and insights of the kind we offer in TCN.

But first, you'll hear from USC's Doug Fisher, the new executive editor of TCN. He discusses some of the changes that will be coming to the newsletter, but stresses this point: You, the reader, are to be the ultimate decider of how we should operate moving forward. We hope you'll take advantage of the commenting feature on this blog, and our e-mail addresses listed in the newsletter, to give us some feedback.

Click here to read November's issue of The Convergence Newsletter.

As always, you can find recent and archived issues here.

November 2007: Beyond Definitions

Dr. Augie Grant has been around the convergence block a few times. As the chairman of the annual Convergence Conference (and former executive editor of The Convergence Newsletter, no less), he gets a pretty good look at what people are studying and talking about when it comes to convergence, and which direction things are headed in the industry and in academia.

For November's issue, Dr. Grant offers something of a "conference wrap up," and gives some perspectives on where this whole notion of convergence has been and where it may be going.

Read the full article here.

You can comment on this article by using the comments link below.

November 2007: Filling a Local Multimedia Void

Dr. Dennis Jeffers, of Central Michigan University, gave what was (at least in this humble editor's opinion) one of the more fascinating presentations as he discussed two newspapers that have taken advantage of a local television void by offering "newscasts" of their own on their Web sites. Could this be the future of local news coverage? Who needs a local network TV affiliate when you have a newspaper, a camera and a Web page?

Read Dr. Jeffers' article here.

You can comment on this article by using the comments link below.

November 2007: Teach Them TV

USC's own Harvie Nachlinger brought all of us convergence crazies back down to earth a bit with his presentation "Teach Them TV," in which he stressed that television news producers in most cases continue to do things the "old-fashioned" way, so we may not want to be too overzealous in our teaching of "convergence," in all its shapes and forms, to the TV journalists of tomorrow.

Read the full article here.

You can comment on this article by using the comments link below.

November 2007: Conferences and Call for Papers

Read the conference schedule from November's issue here.