My research is finally getting interesting for outsiders. I understand that the concept of 'newsroom convergence" may sound difficult or even dull but I"ll try to show you otherwise. Without the academic mumble...I do want you to keep on reading.

For the last five months I"ve been researching the phenomenon of newsroom convergence at the Mail & Guardian. This newspaper has a long history and remains one of the better independent weeklies that is filled with investigative stories.

The Mail & Guardian
I"ve chosen the M&G because of my familiarity with the online section that produces the M&G's website, the fifth busiest website in the country. I have been lucky enough to work with the online team for six months in 2005. This opportunity provided me with the right tools and my research ideas.

The online newsroom and the newspaper newsroom at the M&G are separated from each other by a hallway, kitchen and bathroom. This means that to communicate with each other, someone has to make an effort and walk to the other newsroom. Also, online staff do not write stories for the newspaper (of course there are exceptions) and vice versa. This means that the two newsrooms live in totally different worlds while they are working for the same boss.

This situation is a bit strange. Earlier research has shown that it is more profitable and audience-friendly to work together. Amazing progress can be made quickly: the newspaper can advertise the website or tell the reader to go online for updates on the story. What's more: newspaper staff can start blogging on the website about their latest articles or provide the website with video and audio.

Attitude problems
We can all see how convergence between the two newsrooms provides more journalistic and money-making opportunities. So, what's the problem?

The reporters and editors are the problem. For instance: the newspaper reporters have been working in the same way with the same routines for the last, say, twenty years. They've had their fair share of changing technologies, with the Internet as the biggest alteration in the way reporters do their work. But at least every single one of them could see that the Internet would help with gathering information. But now this newest thing called 'convergence' just sounds like more work!

All of a sudden the reporters need to blog, take pictures, and shoot video. And they stand the chance that the tape recording they make of their interviews is published online. Worst of all: they have to work together with those scary people in the online newsroom!

This problem also works the other way around. Do online journalists really want to work together with a bunch of technology-hating conservatives at the newspaper? It will be a lot of work just to explain how to search on Google, let alone start a Blog!

Can you see the problem now?
This attitude problem is an issue in most newsrooms that are trying to converge. My earlier research for my Honours degree concentrated on the same attitude problem when four newspaper websites in the Netherlands tried to converge. That was a couple of years ago, but the term is still hot because it has only recently been 'discovered" in South Africa.

The M&G, as pioneering as they always are, started to implement a convergence strategy this upcoming year. They've appointed Vincent Maher, a former Rhodes University New Media Lab lecturer, to do the job. For me this is the perfect opportunity to investigate newsroom convergence as a process.

Maher started implementing the strategy this month while I"ve done my first observations and interviews. Slowly but surely the newsrooms will get closer together; and next month I will again observe and interview people to examine the changes.

Because convergence is a process at the M&G that will take up to a year, I will be able to determine if the attitudes of the reporters and editors enable or inhibit the process. I hope to see and understand the biggest problems and find out if converging will work in this case.

So now you know what I'm doing. I'm sorry if it is not interesting at all (I understand if you"re not from the media field) and if it was....here are some interesting links:

--My thesis proposal

--Wikipedia"s definition of convergence

--Some background from Rich Gordon

-- A discussion about converging newspapers and television stations

-- Tips and articles on the converging of media

-- The convergence continuum, one of the models I use in my research

-- Article about the internet and newspapers

-- The coming of convergence and its consequences by Filak