Convergence Gains Critical Mass

By: Randy Dotinga Many newspaper reporters think their blow-dried counterparts on TV are superficial and shallow. For their part, TV folks complain that print people are pompous jerks. So when The Daily Oklahoman developed a partnership with a TV station, some insiders expected tension to boil over in the newsroom.

They were wrong. The most heated clashes actually came in the advertising departments. "The editorial part was the easiest," said Kelly Dyer, general manager of the joint operation known as NewsOK.com. "In advertising and sales, no one really wants to share money. That's where it gets challenging." Dyer's newspaper and TV-station partners formed an eight-member board to smooth over differences.

It's not just ad reps who have a hard time when newspapers and TV stations get cozy. While they may get along in the Sooner State, print and broadcast journalists do indeed fight among themselves when they're forced to work together. And Web-site producers often end in the middle, struggling for respect.

But harmony inside a merged workplace isn't impossible. It just takes a permanent commitment to education and enlightenment, said veterans of convergence projects at last week's Interactive Media Conference and Trade Show in San Diego, sponsored by E&P and Mediaweek, attended by 350 registrants. Other speakers at the conference included Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital, Caroline Little, chief operating officer of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and Bill Geppert, vice president and general manager of Cox Communications.

An estimated 52 newspapers have partnered with TV stations, said Andrew Nachison, director of the Media Center at the American Press Institute. But, of course, TV and print news divisions have very different cultures. Anthony Moor, a former TV reporter, said he had to engage in plenty of education when he helped develop a partnership between the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle and two TV stations.

The Rochester newspaper was surprised that one of the stations agreed to provide its online weather page, said Moor, who serves as new-media editor: "From the publisher on down, they didn't realize what television would do as a partner." The newspaper also failed to realize how much power it had to woo TV stations into a valuable partnership, he said. "We own what's news every morning in our market," he said, and TV stations want part of the action. "We've got tremendous leverage, which our newspaper didn't understand or take advantage of until I got there."

The people who run Web sites for news partners often find that they, too, have to teach people. "I know as shocking as this probably seems to you, not everybody in the offline world embraces the Internet. Sometimes it's quite the opposite," said Gerry Barker, general manager of DallasNews.com for Belo Interactive. "We have to find ways to educate them about who we are. A lot of folks don't understand our role and what we do and question the fact that we do it."

Belo Web-site producers have boosted their internal reputation by being creative, Barker said. The Dallas Morning News has been thrilled by subscriptions driven by its Web site, while traffic coverage boosted the popularity of a TV station's Web site, he said. Newsroom staffers like seeing daily lists of the most popular online stories, while targeted newsletters allow reporters to alert readers to upcoming articles.

"Even though we have a lot of buy-in from the top, convergence is won in the trenches," he said. "It's really winning people over one at a time."