CONVERGENCE: A WORK IN PROCESS

By: Wayne Robins A Report From E&P's Interactive Newspapers Conference


There was no prize for "Best Job Title" at E&P's Interactive Newspapers
Conference, but if there were, an EPpy surely would have been won by Jon
Schwantes. His title is associate editor/director of new partnerships, The
Indianapolis Star/WTHR-TV.

Not since Clark Kent sweated to keep his own brand of convergence a secret from
his colleagues at another great metropolitan newspaper have we seen a media guy
struggling to master two such conflicting roles.

"I represent two completely different ends of the spectrum," Schwantes told the
audience at a panel on making broadcast, newspaper, and Web partnerships work.
"Every day I go to work, I do the newspaper equivalent of bringing together
Eminem and Elton John - and it's not always beautiful music." Just the
night before, Eminem, the controversial rapper with the gay-baiting lyrics and
Sir Elton, the openly gay pop star, had performed together on the Grammy Awards
telecast.

To illustrate the challenges he faces day to day, Schwantes dramatically pinned
a bull's-eye on his chest. Target, yes, but target business model, too. The
message coming from panelists, exhibitors, and many other attendees was that
multimedia convergence among newspapers, TV stations, and Web sites is now the
primary planning model for many media groups, including the Tribune Co., the New
York Times Co., Media General Inc., and Gannett Co. Inc.

Cross purposes

The concurrent message is that convergence remains at best a work in progress,
even in what James K. Gentry, dean of the William Allen White School of
Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, called "easy
convergence" situations (in remarks delivered at the conference). "Easy
convergence" factors include committed, focused leadership; newspaper and cable
TV properties with the same ownership; past work relationships; and flexible or
similar corporate cultures, co-located, without labor unions.

"Difficult convergence" models include companies with other leadership
priorities; over-the-air TV station and newspaper properties without any past
work relationships; and inflexible or dissimilar cultures, located some distance
apart, with labor unions.

Schwantes' situation in Indianapolis has both kinds of issues. Gannett owns the
Star, but WTHR/13, the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis, is the property of
the Wolff family, a small company whose other holdings include TV and radio in
Columbus, Ohio. "I am the corporate link," Schwantes said. It helps that he has
been both a newsroom and statehouse editor for the Star and a regular TV
news figure on both Channel 13 and Indiana PBS stations. (In an interview with
E&P, Schwantes said that he gets his paycheck and benefits from the
Star, because he has more seniority there - 13 years - but the
TV station sends the newspaper a check for 50% of his salary.)

His main job consists of "cross-training": getting print reporters better versed
in the basics of TV ("not picking their noses at the wrong time, not quivering
noticeably," he quipped). Teaching broadcasters to better tell their stories in
print is another part of the deal. "We want it to be a true journalistic
collaboration," he explained, "and that includes having bylines by on-air
personalities in the paper, which is a little hard for traditionalists to
swallow."

It's no easier at The New York Times, which announced (the week of the
conference) that a digital rendition of the print version of the paper would be
available for download, at a price, in a relationship with Texas-based NewsStand
Inc. This service will not replace but complement the paper's free-subscription
online site. The New York Times Co. also has been exploring TV, and in January
the Times' former Washington bureau chief, Michael Oreskes, was named
assistant managing editor in charge of TV and print convergence issues.

"We are committed to analog [the print newspaper] and online working together,"
Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the Times Co. and publisher of the
Times, said during his conference keynote address. "But it is awfully
hard, nearly impossible, to keep it under a single management structure."

Resistance may be keen, but it's time to get over it. Urging alliances across
corporate borders, Janet Evans, news director of IT Network (a provider of
private-label content to multiple media) whose background is TV news, said: "The
word 'competition' should go out with the garbage. What's scary is that people
are protective of what they have, but we have to cooperate. We have to play in
the sandbox together."

Will video kill newsprint stars?

Dallas-based Belo, under Robert Decherd, CEO for more than 14 years, has a mix
of TV, newspaper, and online properties. Its newspaper flagship is The Dallas
Morning News, and below the flag on the front page one finds the usual: day,
month, year, volume, and number. But there's also the paper's Web address
(dallasnews.com) and the phrase, in pink ink no less, "Internet enhanced."

A major newspaper! Internet enhanced! What's it all about, Mr. Decherd?

"Use of the Internet is accelerating rapidly, just as many traditional media
companies are retrenching," he said in an afternoon keynote. "You know and I
know that the Internet is not going to be a footnote to business history."

At a time when major media companies, including his own, have been forced to
make tough short-term business decisions by cutting personnel at online
businesses, Decherd sounded defiant about the immediate costs of staying with
new media for the long haul. "Belo will shift its focus away from financial
markets and to the consumer," he said. "The consumer will light the path to
profitability."

The "Decherd Doctrine," as it could be called, consists of three prescriptions.

o Embrace localism. The breadth and depth of local news newspapers can deliver
on their Web sites is the industry's most valuable resource. "It is a franchise
that is ours to lose," Decherd said, "not for some competitor to win in our
absence or withdrawal. No competitor can duplicate [a local newspaper's]
resources cost-effectively."
o Be prepared for broadband. This is where the alliances with TV stations will
soon become not only urgent but mandatory. "Billions of dollars are being spent
to move consumers from dial-up ISPs [Internet service providers] to broadband,"
Decherd said. "And video will be king. Our newspaper sites need to be preparing
for this inevitability."
o Extend the highest journalistic principles. "It is our industry's consistent
commitment to journalism that has created a compact between us and the
communities we serve," Decherd said. "There are variations of journalistic
standards and reliability on the Internet, but that exists today in print,
radio, and TV today. ... There's no reason technology precludes our best
storytellers writing about the lives of our communities," Decherd declared.

So who is going to pay for this? Right now, the industry will have to foot the
bill for a richer future - to have a future. This was clear when Brent
Baker, dean of Boston University's College of Communications, hosted a panel of
six high-school and college journalists. They were uniformly articulate,
intelligent, and seemingly well-informed. Only one admitted to reading a print
newspaper with any regularity. The others get headlines from instant messages,
from Yahoo! and America Online, and, sometimes, from their hometown papers' Web
sites.

"The politically correct thing to say is that newspapers will always be around,"
Baker said. "I don't believe it. There will always be a need for text. But a
time will come when the online business is supporting the offline unit."



Wayne Robins (wrobins@editorandpublisher.com) is an associate editor covering new media for E&P.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.