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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