The following quotes are a response to the notion of one converged and
combined newsroom from a document called Convergence calls: Multimedia
storytelling at British news websites By Neil Thurman and Ben Lupton
“A website has to be constantly worked at ... If you have people who
are in their heads in both places, the website doesn’t get the
attention it needs.” Anne Spackman Times Online Editor
"A website needed a separate team—one whose role is to innovate. “We
feel you need a small vanguard group who are learning new technology or
thinking about new types of journalism” FT.com editor James
As an online editor myself I have found that the theatre and excitement of a live TV news show overshadows the web requirements. Partly because there are no dramatic deadlines and audiences are smaller.
TV Editors are sometimes reluctant to break news on the web because they don't fully accept it as a primary output. I also think there is a fear of interactivity and a feeling of being out of control.
Traditional journalists often see the online world as dangerous; Blogging particularly so because it involves opinion and is seen as a world populated by citizen journalists (a disputed term) and crackpots. There is also the real possibility that the public could start to dictate the agenda! Heaven forbid.
So my feeling is that the two way, conversational, 'go with the flow' world of the Internet is at odds with the highly controlled world of the newsroom. Let's see if we can loosen things up a bit
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