"Here to Stay" all the way

I guess this helps with the whole ‘what is convergence?’ question from class.

Even though I chose convergence, I was one of the weary who didn’t quite understand what I was getting myself into. I just know that from the get-go people have been telling me that convergence was the ‘future’ of journalism, and now, I believe them.

Considering I did ‘choose’ convergence (ironic that it’s not really a choice I guess, more of an, "I'll take one of each please"), I tend to side more with the “Here to Stay” scenario. While I agree with much of what Stone has to say about the importance of specialization, she looses me with her idea that the future of journalism should be determined with a ‘strategic plan for reorganization.’

Journalism is an art of action, not passive planning. It is what’s happening now, not what might happen ten years from now. This year, Time magazine’s celebrated person of the year was ‘You’, and although many called foul, I agreed with their choice. It is a personal world out there, and journalists have to work in it. Consumers are choosing what they want to read/watch/hear, when they want to read/watch/hear it and from whom they would like to read/watch/hear it. In other words, they are picking their news.

Our duty as the watchdog is getting more and more difficult, and we all know it. Multimedia journalism, as Stevens calls it, delivers the news the way consumers want it. That is, with ‘new approaches of storytelling’, not through extended research and budgeting, as Stone calls for.

The market is changing; there is no doubt about that. Embracing multimedia journalism is not only embracing the changes, but also working with them, using them to our advantage. I find it so bizarre that the next generation of consumers has already accepted this, yet many in the journalism world have not. We (well obviously not ‘we’, since ‘we’ are convergence enthusiasts) need to pick up the pace.