February 2005 Archives

Are blogs journalism? Is my weblog journalism? Is Wonkette journalism? Is Powerline journalism? Is Culture Snob?

The key to understanding whether blogs are journalism or not is the ability to discern legitimate journalistic efforts from the crap. We have that ability with newspapers; no one reads Tounge in Beak and understands it as real news. We have that ability with TV; no one considers Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on Weekend Update to be journalists. Yet, when the computer screen turns on, and the Internet browser pops up, people's sensibilities fly out the window. Why is that? One word: participation. The level and ease of posting to the Internet instantly causes people to be suspicous. Not anyone can be Bob Woodward, not everyone can be Anderson Cooper, but anyone can spend 2 minutes setting up a Blogger account and instantly start producing content. One of the most common and aggravating criticisms of blog journalism is that blogs aren't journalism because bloggers are just housewives or the unemployed who post their diaries to the Internet. Yes, there are blogs out there written by your roommate's 11 year old sister, and yes there are blogs devoted entirely to Hilary Duff and puppies. However, for every New York Times, there is a cheesy fan club newsletter. So for every Hilary Duff puppy website, there is a Wonkette.

Clumping all amateur blogs in with every respectable blog is a mistake. Not all blogs are journalism, but journalism does not exclude blogs. Weblogs, while they can be used for other things, have the capability to produce news content and be called a journalistic effort. Students these days are taught how to be discerning when getting information off the Internet. These skills are required to realize that, phenomenon or not, weblogging is the new media and old school journalists are going to have to make room.

I had a blog in 10th grade. All my friends did. It was on opendiary.com and we lived and breathed by them. When I came to college, opendiary was out and livejournal.com was in. I guess "journal" does sound more grown up.

This form of expression has been lurking underground for years, hiding under various names. Suddenly, online journalists are terrified because they see this inbred form of expression infiltrating their news sites. The Lawrence Journal World has a daily blog on the front page of their website. But I couldn't find blogs on the front of the New York Times site or the Washington Post site.

Instead, blogs are mostly confined to personal websites and those specifically meant for blogging, like Squarespace and blogger.com. They are entertainment, free time, web surfing. Not news.

I see the value in blogs, I love writing in mine and I really enjoy reading others. I don't, however, see the news value in blogs.

Blogs, open diaries and live journals have always been and always will be entertainment for me. At their best, they're the online eqivilant of an opinion page of the a newspaper. A solid asset, but never a cornerstone. News sites may offer them as a supplement, but they aren't the threat old-school journalists make them out to be. They aren't real journalism.

I believe blogs will stick around. They might change their names or revamp their image, but they will always be interesting and fun. There is no way, however, that they will ever have a solid place in news. They are like dessert. When I finish my news I want something fun and tasty to end on.

And that is the blog.

Okay, so what is the deal with blogs? I don't understand why people have blogs or why people feel compelled to have them. I'll tell you someone who doesn't care for blogs -€“ me. I just don't get blogging or bloggers. Honestly, if I wasn't required to keep a blog for this class, I wouldn't have one. The main reason that I don't have a blog is because I just don't have the time. If I had extra time during the week, especially a couple of hours, which is the time I estimate it takes me to create posts for this blog, I would hope that I would do something more useful with my time, such as sleep.

Now, I'm not saying I hate blogs; but, some people do. After a quick "I hate blogs" google search I found that quite a few people love to blog bash. What's interesting though, is that most of the "I hate blog" websites that I found are actually blogs. The "Oh God. Make it Stop. I hate Blogs" blog was rather interesting, €but I digress.

So what separates a blogger from a non-blogger and why am I a non-blogger? Well, I don't chitchat a whole lot and when I talk to someone, and especially when I write, I try to choose my words carefully. So basically I don't have the time, nor would I want, to sit down and write about all the things I did today and even if I did have the time and wanted to it would take me forever because I would have to re-read and re-type what I wrote a billion times. No thank you!

With that said, I have not only revealed why I don't blog, but what I think a blog is. Well, actually, what I used to think a blog was before I took this online journalism class. Before this class, I thought that most bloggers were a bunch of Joe Schmoes ranting and raving about their life. And I think until a few years ago that was probably true and most news organizations thought the same.

I, like many news organizations, eventually caught on that many bloggers weren't just creating posts about the ins and outs of their day and that the people who were reading blogs actually found some news value in what they were reading. So here is where blogging began to impact journalism but to what extent will it affect journalism in the future.

J.D. Lasica says in Blogs and Journalism Need Each Other that "weblogs should not be considered in isolation but as part of an emerging new media ecosystem -- a network of ideas." From this perspective, it appears that blogs will become an even more important part of journalism. Lasica also says that many people tend to forget that the derivation of the word journalist means someone who keeps an account of day-to-day events.

When the internet was first introduced to me in seventh grade, I embraced it whole-heartedly. I would fight with my brother about whose turn it was to be online. I had friends in certain chat rooms and looked forward to talking with them. It was like my own little family.

As I got older, I stopped chatting in online chat rooms. I talked with my friends through instant messages and I would occassionally read their blogs. But I could never really understand why people wanted to put their own thoughts and musings online for other people to read. It just seemed so silly to me. That is, until I created one of my own. Livejournal connects me to family members and friends. I find that I can write my feelings better than actually talk about them, so friends can go online to see what I'm up to.

The blogging phenomenon is a movement that will create new forms of journalism, public discussion, interactivity and online community.

While no one is really sure where this is all heading, I think it represents the start of the weblogging revolution. Blogging will create amateur journalism as millions of internet users take on the role of columnist, reporter, analyst and publisher while writing their own personal thoughts. It won't happen overnight, and right now we're only seeing the beginning of this phenomenon, but wait a few years when broadband and multimedia fully emerge, and we'll see the importance.

The internet allows people to take on the role of journalist. "The Web gives voice to a lot of alternative points of view," Paul Andrews, co-author of the book, Gates (Doubleday, 1993) and who wrote How the Web Was Won (Broadway Books, 1999) said: "The role of the journalist is to ensure that the voice of the people should be exposed."

Bloggers can also read and respond to online articles, offering new insights to an old story, correcting mistakes or just commenting on the story as a whole. More people are taking up blogging and more of us are beginning to rely on blogs to help us shape our own personal media experience. Weblogging is already and important part of journalism. More writers are jumping onto the internet bandwagon and though we might not be able to predict just how important it will be for the media, we are already starting to see the effects.

My first introduction to weblogs was xanga. One of my friends set up an account and would just write about what was happening in his life, like a daily journal. It was semi-interesting, but I bet it would be pretty boring to anyone who didn't know him. Then I started finding out more people I know who have xanga. A couple girls I know would write these insanely long entries on their deepest emotions and feelings about life. It was intense. And I pretty much thought that's all that existed in the form of weblogs.

Then I got into this online journalism class and learned about weblogs that can actually be interesting to outside readers. Weblogs can be used to explain and teach people about certain topics, as well as give readers an insight into the blogger's thoughts on a topic.

We were sitting in the newsroom one day when someone announced they heard that the actor who played Napolean Dynamite had died. I think it was Lisa who immediately said, check the blogs. Somehow our main source of information became checking up on rumors on people's blogs.

As I started writing this, I was thinking, "no way," blogging will not become an important part of journalism. But now I am thinking that maybe it will. While some blogs do contain valid and useful information, a lot of the information can only be considered opinion or rumors. However, I think blogs will be important because most journalism starts with rumors. We hear something that may be news, check it out, and then try to find a valid source to talk about the topic. In the campus newsroom right now, our main sources for story ideas are other news sources like the Kansan, Lawrence Journal-World and online media sites. But I think eventually the reporters will tap more into what the people are saying about life on their personal weblogs. I'm sure there's news there that we may never have known without blogs, but it will still be difficult to sort through all of them, so who knows? I guess we'll just have to find out.

A hapless squirrel taught the class a lesson this morning when it stumbled into a transformer on the south edge of campus and plunged the multimedia newsroom into darknness.

The electrocution happened about an hour before J694 class began. The KUJH-TV news meeting had just begun. As the realization that the whole campus had been affected sunk in, the multimedia newsroom cleared out. Producer Karen Ambramowitz looked pretty lonely, fielding phone calls by herself. As the clock ticked toward class time, it was clear what I had to do. "I've got 10 people due here in a few minutes," I told Karen. "We'll handle the phones and get going on the story from here."

And we did. It was one of those team building, group bonding moments when everybody fires up their skills to cover a breaking story. I love this business.

Staci Wolfe headed out the door with Megan Kellerher, Amanda Tate, Bryan Wilcox and a camera. Audrey Esther made a few phone calls and grabbed a camera to get an interview with an electrical engineer. Meagan sat down at the G5 and began to screen video as it came in from the field. Katy Humpert got on one of the few battery powered computers that was working and got an interview with a guy in Columbia, Mo., whose whole business is keeping animals out of electrical equipment. Erin Ohm started to struggle with making a map of the affected area. Adam Sechrist grabbed a digital camera to get stills of students studying in the dark. Louis Mora and Candice Rukes and Robert Riley worked to bring together the facts for a breaking news post to the web. Byran sweated it out in the server closet to get the server back up so we could post to the web.

Within an hour, just as class time was ending, we had the pieces together and server on line so we could put a story on the web. When the tape came back from the substation, KUJH-TV reporters Kyle Geiken and Denise Spidle drew a crowd. They had the squirrel. As we rolled tape, a cheer went up for a KUJH exclusive.

We had the money shot: One very charred squirrel who died to make this a day when we all did multimedia news for real. View the unedited b-roll of the fried squirrel (WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS GRAPHIC AND COULD BE OFFENSIVE).

Catch the whole KUJH-TV story, Power outage hits campus.

One of the hardest obstacles to face as an online producer is taking a story that didn't have a lot to begin with and to make it run online. One story that has been plaguing the newsroom has been the Murray murder trial. The story of the trial of the Kansas State professor who murdered his ex-wife is a major news story for Lawrence. Our obstacle at KUJH-TV is that we do not have as much access to information as we would like to have. Plus, some of our reporters might not be as adept at court reporting as those at perhaps Channel 6. So what can we do? Web extras.

In almost every Murray trial story, we have not used our potential to expand beyond the boring readers that we re-post online. For instance, this story touches on how testimony would begin Thursday. A great idea for catching readers up with this story would be an interactive timeline. I think Flash has the capabilities of producing a timeline that is dynamic and would allow the readers to click on specific events regarding this investigation, and eventually the trial, and read previous stories.

Another option is one we talked about in class on Wednesday. We are itching to do a photo slideshow somewhere on this website. An option for tv.ku.edu would a photo slideshow from various points in the timeline. At this point, we wouldn't have the amount of photos or the rights to get such photos, but the opportunity is still there to somehow create a photo slideshow from footage that we do have.

This next web extra is really specific to the particular story. Murray has been charged with murder, and some evidence includes Internet searches. An interesting sidebar story would be how using the Internet for investigations is such a relevant occurrence. Obviously the sidebar would be relevant to the story, but having the story be about Internet on the Internet is interesting as well.

Coming up with "legs" for stories like the Murray trial should be what online producers want to do. Throwing up the cast script for a story about a murder trial in Douglas County will not do on the Internet anymore. The next time we approach this story, let's approach it from new, interesting angles.

If online journalism simply entailed text with pictures, readers would have no reason to prefer it to the newspaper. They want links, video, live streams and even advanced advertising. As online producers, we must strive to provide more in our web stories than a video package and read along. We have to engage the reader, tell them where to go next and get them to come back for more.

Let us take the KUJH-TV story Community Blood Center hopes for more donations, which was put together by my stellar 692 partners Brooke and Haley. Good story, but what could make it better?

First of all, the story is about the Community Blood Center, and there isn't a link to the organizations website. With bleeding heart stories like this, we have to make the reader at least think we care that there are not enough blood donors and that we really want them to help out. We should always try to link the organizations name to the site.

Now that we have given the reader the power to participate in the story, we need to show them, not tell them that there is a problem. In the second paragraph the page states that the center requires 515 units of blood per day to meet its need, but the reader doesn't know how much a unit is. The reader might assume that a unit is taken from each person and 515 people need to donate blood every day. All of the information in question could most easily be answered in a small graph, even if it only has the average amount they get compared with the amount they need.

In the third paragraph, Brooke and Haley get the donor recruiter's take on the situation. There is a problem if they did the interview over the phone, but if they went down to the blood center, a picture of her in between her introduction and quote would be perfect.

Brooke and Haley wrap up the story by telling the reader how much more the blood center needs, which would come into focus with the aforementioned graph, and where the blood is going to. I guess we could add in links to the specific hospitals the blood is going to, but it might be better to just name them in the article.

I believe that the addition of these elements would give the story the added dimensions that readers will eventually come to expect from online journalism. When you are tying to pull on peoples heart strings with a donation story, you should really try to give them the tools they need to help out. Right now this page just says, have fun flipping through the phone book trying to solve this problem we found for you.

The first place I usually go to get news is a newspaper. I grew up reading the newspaper at the breakfast table and I know that I can always rely on it to get the important information to me in the morning. But I can't choose what kind of news I want. I read what the editor thinks is important. And as much as I love newspapers, I still log onto the Web in the afternoons to check out msn. On the Web, I have a million different options to satisfy my need for news.

But it's not the internet that is changing the definition of news. News is not changing at all. What the Web is changing is the way news is presented. People shouted out the news from the street corners before we invented the printing press. With newspapers, editors had to decide what was important to the readers, but the news didn't change. The medium only expanded the content. From that came radio and then TV and the news still hasn't changed just because these new media were created. These media changed us. Now, with the Web, I can find out that my new baby cousin was born yesterday. I can read about her birth and I can see photographs of the new family. Although this birth is important to me and close relatives, it's not something that an editor would put on the front page or the splash screen. But it's still news.

The definition of news won't be affected because of the Web. What the audience chooses as its news is what the Web will change.

Whenever I enter my photos into the server in the basement of the Journal World news center, Brett Garland, a photo editor, and I half pay attention to the O'Riley Factor on Fox News. He smirks and scoffs while I hold back my laughter. When I'm finished, I leave Garland to his musings and head upstairs to do the weather report.

It always amazed me how he could take the program seriously, but he is far from alone. Fox News is one of the most watched news sources in country and serves as a primetime example of an era of personalized news.

The largest platform for personalized news is the Internet. Yahoo offers personalized home pages featuring weather, horoscopes, headlines, individual comics, and whatever else the user is interested in. The quickest place to get whatever news one wants is usually the specific web page that specializes in the topic or the organization of interest's site. Can we really call this news?

The fact of the matter is, the people who depend on Yahoo news and organizational web pages are the type of people who probably never read the newspaper in the first place. They certainly didn't listen to NPR of watch the BBC to figure out what was actually going on in the world. There will be a place for reputable journalism amidst this neo-media, no matter how much personalized news is effortlessly available to us.

In short, I feel that, although the world of convenience news is a scary one, journalistic integrity will win out in the end. The type of yellow journalism found on Fox News and the set-it-and-forget-it convenience of internet news will fall short of people's expectations. After the audience has been thoroughly betrayed by misinformation, they will come whimpering back.

With the Internet, news is no longer the presentation of information by salaried journalists. Instead, in the case of Baghdad Blogger Salam Pax, news is compled by the newsmakers themselves.

This freedom on the Internet is a blessing and a curse. This new definition of news as a public, participatory project creates a reliability problem. One of the most important aspects of the definition of news is the idea that the information is being presented by a reliable souce. A career journalist has more to lose by twisting the truth than an anonymous blogger does.

The face of news is changing. Reliabilty will be the number one problem facing newcasts of the future, as though it weren't already a problem now.

When I first got AOL in eighth grade, the program offered each member the option of having a "news profile." Each member would type in keywords and AOL would e-mail the member whatever news articles contained those words. I typed in "Hanson." I began receiving every press release and published article about the boy band the world could offer. It was the only news I read.

I believe AOL had the idea right --€” even back in 1996: Personalized news. Pretty soon, with a world of information at our fingertips, that kind of news will be the only thing that will interest anyone.

The difference between AOL and the future, however, is eerie. Right now, the Internet collects an amazing amount of information about each user's taste, preferences and hobbies, and it's all done secretly. Every time someone visits a website, it's recorded and offered to web users. People are profiled to be advertised to more accurately.

I believe this may go a step further with the news. In the future, "the news" won't be what impacts the world, but what impacts every individual's world. E-mail sites will begin to offer personalized news to their users. If one visits Snoop Dogg's homepage then they'll get the news on his latest drug arrest. If one visits AddictedToScrapbooking.com and a company that produces scrap books has to cut jobs, they would get that news in their e-mail the next morning.

This will be a feature that internet users look for in a news service. It could be offered through an e-mail provider, an ISP or maybe even news site will join in. One could go to The New York Times and it will filter through the news and present news matching with the user's information.

We will all be a detailed map of our interests and these interests will shape our news. There will no longer be a worldwide definition, just individual value.

I rarely read the New York Times or USA Today, and actually, I would never read them if they weren't free on campus. I read bits and pieces of the Lawrence Journal-World, and I read a lot of the Kansan. Why? Because I'm only interested in news that is local and about people that I either know or am connected to. Not to say I don't think national news affects me. I'm sure to some extent it does. But it doesn't pique my interest the way local and campus news does. I don't think I'm alone, either.

My brother picks up a newspaper and goes straight to the sports page. Some of my friends only want to read the editorials. I tend to pay more attention to stories about things like student housing because I was an RA, or religious stories because I am involved in a Christian organization. Even though different people tend to focus on specific story types in the newspaper or on TV, they at least still see the major headlines about national and international news and at least know a little of what's going on in the rest of the world.

Our own KUJH-TV website allows visitors to pick out different stories and create their own newscast.

The idea of people choosing their own news is not a new one. However, my concern is that people will design their own news websites and not even hear about things that could potentially affect them, just because it doesn't fall into one of their news categories. If the Web only shows people what they ask to see, my brother wouldn't glance over those main headlines on his way to the sports section, and my friends wouldn't breeze through the front page stories before turning to the opinion page. With the Web there's no page turning; only the news you have requested. The question is, are people really getting the news then? I think people are missing out if they only ever see what they want to see. In the future of Web journalism, I hope that the major headlines will never be withheld, even if the reader didn't choose to see them.

I do think that the definition of "news" is changing and growing. In large part, the changes that are taking place now come from the new opportunities made available by the internet.

MSNBC.com is a good example of how the internet is allowing changes to take place, at a much more rapid rate than in the past, in what we define as news. The folks at MSNBC.com have a new element of their Web site called Citizen Journalists Report. On this page, everyday web surfers are given a topic to write about and, if they choose, they may "file a report" with MSNBC.com. Then, MSNBC.com posts the comments as part of the citizen's report. Citizens can even submit pictures. This type of participatory journalism is growing everyday on the Web.

Also, on many news Web sites, journalists are allowed and encouraged to post their own blogs. Denise Hazlick's blog on MSNBC.com is a good example. Blogs have also opened the door even more for everyday people wanting to post their thoughts online. Blogs represent a way that the definition of news is changing. Everyday, more and more people are finding that reading about an average person's life is newsworthy to them.

The definition of news has never been static, but something that grows and changes with time. Seventy years ago, stories like Gwen Stefani's new hair style or P.Diddy's new pimp ride would never have been considered newsworthy (and not just because neither was alive back then), so changes should not be a surprise. But, after watching a disturbing video in class today about where the future of news could be heading, I am beginning to see how much could change and how far the news industry could go in the wrong direction.

Participatory journalism will lead to a whole industry where people decide that they don't want an objective journalist giving them the news, but instead a fellow citizen to write the news and "tell it like it is". People will like this type of journalism better because they are better able to relate to these "citizen journalists" and may even agree more with their version of events. This will become what people expect from their news and objective news will be on the brink of being a thing of the past. Instead of reading newspapers, people will check up on their favorite blogs to find out what is going on in the world. But, people will, after years of citizen journalist's reports, see the problems. People will begin to see that if there is no fact-checking, no editing, no objectivity, that their news is not really news, just gossip and fluff.

After this realization, journalists will come back into the spotlight. Journalists will become important to society again while citizens will begin to value quality and objective news like never before. Whatever obstacles we journalists have to face in the future, I trust that impartial and accurate news will always prevail in the end.

What sort of new content does the Internet need? That's a great question, but a lot harder to answer. Initially, I thought that the Internet had already covered everything. A suggestion in class today was interesting; it suggested a web area for Alzheimer's. That is a great idea, but I found this. I scour the Internet daily, spending more time on the Internet than I do anything else in my life.

So, for more ideas I turned to my fellow students in the newsroom. Katie Lohrenz and I were tossing out ideas when it dawned on me. Disabled individuals who want to look at news organization's websites might have quite a few problems even reading the first page. A lot of computers have accessibility options to enlarge type and even have an electronic voice read off stories. Katie and I noted that most website's formats don't allow for such large type, and listening to a computer voice read off stories is impersonal.

After searching the Internet, I discovered this website. What I found most amusing about this site was how small the type was, and how it looked completely inaccessible for anyone with any sort of vision disability. My idea for a new website is a news organization that covers national and world news, as well as specific news regarding disabled person's rights, new technology and any information that could be specifically geared toward a disabled person. All of this information in a readable format! Reporters could record their voices reading their stories, which also gives a more personal edge, rather than a computerized voice.

Staffing such a website would require experts on disabled persons, as well as reporters who can cover national and world news as well as news that can be specifically geared toward disabled people.

The Iraq election has been among the leading news stories this week, and while I was browsing to catch up on the latest reports from Iraq , I found a multimedia piece about Cpl. B.J. Jackson on MSNBC.com. Jackson is a 23-year-old veteran of the war who lost both his legs in an explosion. In a series of video clips, he shared the challenges he now faces after returning to the U.S.

Jackson said in his commentary that the resources veterans need are out there, but you have to know where to look. His struggle made me think of the thousands of other veterans like him that need a reliable source of information to stay up-to-date and help them reorganize their lives. When I surfed the web for veterans' news, I found only one simplistic site devoted to veteran news, but its content was largely current military news. The Department of Veterans Affairs has an extensive web site, but the focus is not news. A news web site focused on veterans of the U.S. armed forces is a need that has not yet been met on the web.

The VA department estimated in July 1997 that there were about 25.6 million living veterans. That estimate has no doubt changed, but it doesn't include dependents, who might also be drawn to a news site dedicated to veteran affairs. A veterans-specific site could feature not only current military news, but military history for veterans of past wars and conflicts. A major concern of most veterans is health care - how and where to get it. Information about changes to health benefits, tips for applying, recent medical research related to common injuries, and the psychological component of good health would be in one place and easy to access on a good news site.

Another important topic for veterans is employment -- where to direct their efforts after returning to civilian life. A news site could address this concern through feature-style content about education and vocation opportunities and features on successful veterans. Interactive opportunities on such a web site would be great -€“ discussion boards and chat rooms for veterans to meet or reunite, and maybe an honored veteran for the day submitted by readers.

To make the site successful, a working relationship with the military and the VA department would be helpful, particularly in aggregating any helpful information from their sites. Ads selling health care products, psychological services, life insurance and vocational or educational training could also help support the site.

Because of the number of U.S. veterans, the prominence of the Iraq war and the soldiers now returning home with injuries, it's the right time to launch a veterans web site to provide resources and information to veterans like Cpl. Jackson.

I lived in University housing for two years. First I was a resident, then I was a resident assistant. I had no idea until I became an RA that one of the points of student housing is to build a sort of community. I guess I realized during RA training that my RAs from the year before had made some efforts to bring the floor, and maybe even the whole dorm, together in some way. But living in a dorm of 900 people, I felt disconnected from pretty much everyone besides my 15 friends from the fourth floor.

So let's get to the point. What if KU took the current website for the Department of Student Housing and turned it into a news site for all the residence halls? I feel like a website that involved news of what's going on in the dorms, either official or unofficial news, would help residents feel more connected. It could also include features about different residents or RAs and message boards for residents to talk about their lives in housing. Much like a local newspaper helps a community to feel connected, so would a news website for residence halls.

I think the best way for a website like this to work is to have the housing directors, complex directors, RAs and residents all contribute to the site. I am sure that they could easily get advertisers for the site from local businesses, and that way they could make extra money to use to spruce up the site and make it more appealing.

I am fairly confident residents would start checking the website frequently. College students, especially freshman, love the internet, and they love seeing people they know on the internet. Just look at the phenomenon of The Facebook. College students can obsess over the internet; so, it seems like, these days, the internet may be the only way to bring them together. Well, that and alcohol, I guess.

The University Daily Kansan and KUJH-TV made an effort to converge Monday night after the Border Showdown. Days before the Kansas-Missouri game, staff from the Kansan and KUJH-TV met to talk about how to combine forces to produce multimedia for the Web. The plan: KUJH-TV staffers were going to use still photos from the Kansan and recorded sound of quotes and ambient bar noise from KUJH-TV into a multimedia slideshow that both media could use. Staff in the Multimedia Newsroom would build the slideshow because the technology to add sound to a slideshow is located down here. (We're in two buildings, you see.) Unfortunately, the plan failed.

There is no need to identify who dropped the ball or who put in more effort for this trial run of convergence. There is no need for animosity between the two campus media. And there is no need for excuses.

There is a need not to take it personally. It's a systematic failure, not a personal one.

Over the last six years attempts like this have been unsuccessful. Six years, and we're still not past the trial-run stage. I'm astounded. How many years does it take to break away from the traditional media mindset and put words into action?