Picture it (cue the foggy haze and dreamy music): Reporters, TV and Web, working at computer terminals side by side, each writing up a story about the bank hold-up that happened that afternoon. Producers of both media finding out more information on stories and putting the finishing touches on others while also making sure reporters are getting their stories in on time. Even a newspaper reporter runs in from time to time. Everyone is moving around the newsroom, like a fine, well-oiled machine, with the same goal in mind: Produce the news. "Keep dreaming," you might be thinking to yourself. But this vision might not be as far a stretch as you might think.
What we are doing in our little eHub multimedia newsroom is the first step towards making this dream a reality, a multimedia reality. Having all types of media working together under one roof is probably the best and smartest idea since milk and cookies (Whoever came up with that combination is a genius). It seems strange to me that this hasn't happened sooner. I mean, having all types of media together in one place seems to me to be the best way to get the news out, be it reading it, hearing it, or seeing it. Think back to the days of kindergarten when all you knew how to do was simple arithmetic. The equation here is simple addition: good + good = more good, broadcast + newspaper + the Web = the best and comprehensive look at news.
I feel surprised and proud that here in the Midwest, in little old Kansas, we are light years ahead of other school's journalism programs, the so-called more "prestigious" schools, and even actual news stations around the nation. Surprised because places such as Columbia School of Journalism didn't have much of a multimedia newsroom to speak of, if any. And sure, the station that I interned at this summer had a nice looking web site, but all of their content was pretty much shovelware; there was no real original content to be found. I'm proud because this journalistic and technological endeavor the level of cooperation between different media that we are trying to accomplish is astounding.
By the end of this semester, I think this class is going to form a sturdy foundation for creating a more converged newsroom, and perhaps we'll set an example, maybe even the standard for what a newsroom will and should be in the future.
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