Mixing mediums...

Writer for The Christchurch Press Alex van Wel is immersing himself in convergent thinking - the coming together of all forms of journalism online. He's in America on Fairfax Media's Mike Robson Fellowship, travelling from South Carolina up to New York. On day three he spent a morning with the Shelby Star newspaper in North Carolina - a paper firmly embracing the digital age.



Yup...it's a video news provider, a newspaper, and an online and interactive source of local information - an entirely new media animal.
Once upon a time it was simply a print publication, but for the past few years the Star in North Carolina has been blurring age-old distinctions.
It defines itself minute by minute, in line with the way the news-day unfolds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDv88CHVttE

For reporters, it was adapt or die...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGUVDFUSbNg

So, while circulation dwindles and print executives in the US grope around in the dark for a solution to their revenue crisis, a new genre of journalism is quietly emerging from their thinned-out newsrooms. It’s one in which immediacy, interactivity, and multi-media is becoming key.

(Day 4)
The Roanoke Times in Virginia this week held an unprecedented multi-media brainstorming session with its staff - to firmly embed valuable experiences gained over the past few years.
It learned a thing or two during the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBh9DIYPN68

In essence it's about making sure the cultural shift is firmly in place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz2yrvEuJOU

But some worry the new focus may dumb down the offering and reduce reporters to no more than ‘content-gatherers’, stretched to deliver on so many different platforms.
“Do I film, tweet, scribble or e-mail?” they ask.
Gone is the long lunch...and time to think, as one senior journalist put it.
The concern is that careful analysis and reflection could be lost in the much busier lives of today’s reporters. Traditional print writers are increasingly being expected to understand moving film, graphics, audio and still pictures - as well as being masters of the written word.
It's not an issue, though, according to the Shelby Star's advocate of change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5KxE1HZKsw