TRIBUNE'S KING OF CONVERGENCE

By: Wayne Robins E&P Talks To Company's Intergroup Development VP





It's time to play "Define That Word," and the word of the day is "budget." What does "budget" mean to you, Mr. Newspaper Editor? "It's the meeting at which we discuss the stories we're working on for tomorrow's newspaper."



And what does "budget" mean to you, Ms. TV News Producer? "It means the suits upstairs want to know my dollar numbers for next year when I'm trying to negotiate a deal for a hotshot anchor from Anchorage."



Dave Underhill, vice president of intergroup development of the Tribune Co., likes to use the different meanings of "budget" to illustrate one of the many hurdles he faces as point man for his company's multimedia vision. The company goal is to integrate the reporting and writing talent of its print journalists, the audio-visual storytelling capability of its TV people, and the speed and intimacy of the Internet into a new model that requires give-and-take across distinctive media with their own cultures, work habits, and even simple vocabularies.



It's not rocket science. Achieving this mixture, often referred to as "Media Convergence," doesn't appear to be nearly as easy as rocket science.



"Change is a challenge," Underhill said recently during a visit to New York, where he addressed the Society of Professional Journalists' local Deadline Club chapter at the Newseum/NY in a talk called "The Multimedia Newsroom."



In an interview at his hotel the next morning, Underhill elaborated on the basic premise. "Our company's vision is that these multiple media in a local marketplace can create new value," he said. "New opportunities on a business level for advertisers, in marketing and promotion to strengthen brands, and new opportunities in journalism. So, really, it's about the culture change that is necessary to execute that plan: from print to interactive, interactive to broadcast, broadcast to print. And every one of those has the potential for a communications challenge or cultural conflict."



Ink-stained mugs on camera



The Tribune Co. has long been a proponent of cooperation between its TV stations and newspapers. "It actually goes back to the idea that a newspaper company would start a radio station in the 1920s or a TV station in the 1940s,'' Underhill said, referring to the broadcasting flagship WGN, started those many years ago by the owners of the Chicago Tribune. (WGN, in fact, stands for World's Greatest Newspaper.)



Tribune's local cable outlet, CLTV in Chicago, was launched in the early 1990s. The company was an early investor in America Online. Years before newspaper Web sites were common, Tribune's Chicago Online and Orlando Sentinel Online were available on the AOL platform. And it is a partner in the WB network (it owns 25%) and the TV Food Network (29%).



CLTV is a typical Tribune convergence project. A 24-hour local news and information channel, it features news, traffic, weather, sports, and baseball games of the Chicago Cubs (a team owned by Tribune).



Among the regular programs on CLTV is "Good Eating," which is described by the company as "the TV show companion to the Chicago Tribune's food section." In addition to presentations on the cable channel, "Good Eating" text can be seen online at Metromix, Tribune's Chicago nightlife site. A recent pizza tasting by Tribune "experts" showcased a who's who of Windy City media convergence, with judges from Metromix, CLTV, and WGN, aided and abetted by a Chicago Tribune staff writer and the Tribune's restaurant critic.



That's not to say that CLTV is either the toast or beast of the Tribune newsroom. "Nobody's really talking about it,'' said Michael Miner, media columnist for the Chicago Reader, the city's alternative weekly. The Chicago newspaper people he's heard from have mixed feelings about putting their ink-stained mugs on camera. "I hear from some journalists who think it's silly, some who think it's wonderful because it's great to be on TV, and others who feel that some of their careers are in jeopardy because they feel old-fashioned," he said.



Even with ratings that might be considered inconspicuous, CLTV is a cornerstone of Tribune's belief that the more outlets, the better for the modern media company.



Tribune's Florida papers, the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and the Orlando Sentinel, also have close working relationships with local cable and broadcast channels. Tribune, in fact, built the studios for its Orlando cable channel CFN13 on the same site as the Orlando Sentinel building.



There have been some ambitious Tribune failures, as well, such as the Full Service Network, an interactive TV experiment in Orlando from 1994 to 1996, done in partnership with Time Warner, but hampered by technical and distribution problems.


Send in the clowns?



While each of the four Tribune "legacy" newspapers have TV affiliates in their newsrooms - the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, the Sun-Sentinel, and the Daily Press in Newport News, Va. - it wasn't until the "merger" with the Times Mirror Co. last spring that Tribune had the media outlets on the coasts to complete its major market trifecta.



And, boy, that could be a problem. In a column shortly after the purchase of Times Mirror, Los Angeles Times TV critic Howard Rosenberg mockingly "withdrew" some caustic comments about their unexpected and unwanted corporate sibling, KTLA-TV. "Remember when I called KTLA's 10 p.m. anchorman Hal Fishman an egomaniacal windbag?" Rosenberg asked. "Get outta here. I was just kidding. A humble bag of warmth is what the Fishster is."



Then, in August, Times TV writer Brian Lowry vented some skepticism about synergy with the Tribune-owned KTLA. "Tribune has sought to benefit from owning television stations along with newspapers in other cities," Lowry wrote. "Sounds great, except for one little problem: Very few people in the immediate vicinity can stand KTLA's primary entertainment personality, Sam Rubin ... and the feeling is clearly mutual. Rubin, of course, is a regular on 'The KTLA Morning News,' Los Angeles' foremost clown college."



One Times veteran who sees the situation as difficult, though not hopeless, is Patt Morrison, a longtime news columnist. She has more than 20 years at the paper - as well as eight years as the host of her own Emmy winning TV show "Life & Times" on L.A.'s PBS outlet.



"The quality of TV news out here is really poor, very Hollywood-centric and crime-centric," Morrison said in a phone interview. "I think there is some reluctance on the part of much of the staff, in part because this is very new and in part because a lot of the local news in L.A. has not reflected some of the seriousness of the stories the Times has covered so well."



Footprints on East Coast



Back East, Newsday, newly acquired from Times Mirror, dominates Long Island, N.Y. But its sole urban base is in the leafy borough of Queens. Whether this technically gives Tribune major newspapers in the three major TV markets is open to discussion.



Will the Tribune try to establish Newsday as a city paper again, as Times Mirror had done (in a failing venture) from 1985 to 1995? "To restate the question in multimedia terms: is there a way that Newsday, with its footprint [including Newsday.com], can work in a complementary manner with WPIX/Channel 11 and its footprint?" Underhill asked. "The answer is: absolutely."



How such a "footprint" might look is visible at the Tribune's new Connecticut acquisitions, former Times Mirror papers of which the largest is the statewide Hartford Courant. The Web site, ctnow.com, is produced by the Courant. Web site "affiliates" include WTIC/Fox 61, owned by Tribune, and a dozen smaller Connecticut dailies and weeklies - some owned by Tribune, others not.



During the summer, Fox 61's "News At Ten" ran a popular series called "Day Trippers," a travel feature with recommendations on mini-vacations throughout the state. "What is the shelf life of these items?" Underhill asked rhetorically. He answered his own question: "None." But as the Fox61.com Web site will tell you, you can watch a rebroadcast of "Day Tripper" features any time you want - archived on ctnow.com.



Dave Underhill, media gypsy



It is safe to say that the 48-year-old Underhill was a multimedia guy, even when multimedia meant running the two sides of WKVT, the AM news-talk and FM classic-rock outlet he owned, in Brattleboro, Vt., from 1983 to 1994. A media gypsy, he did about every broadcasting job out there, on stations from Salt Lake City to Boston to Washington. The only things he didn't do, apparently, was fly his own traffic helicopter or don sunglasses, a white suit, and do a DJ shift as "Dancin' Dave Dynamite" during the disco era.



"He really is a newsman," said Ginny Yager, now an office manager for the Brattleboro police department, who worked for 13 years with Underhill at WKVT. "He did the morning news for a long time, and if he heard something on the police scanner, he made sure we got out and covered it. He always carried a tape recorder wherever he went. He didn't like to be scooped."



When Underhill bought WKVT, he "pulled together the perfect group of people for running a small market station on a shoestring," Yager said. "He was a first-rate engineer and newsperson; he married the best [advertising] traffic person he knew. Another partner was a CPA; another had been an FCC lawyer. He had his own technical expertise, so he didn't have to hire out for an engineer if something broke. We didn't suffer with technical malfunctions for very long."



By the early 1990s, though, Underhill appeared to be restless. "Dave did a good job with a local radio station, but he was definitely hiding his light under a bushel," Yager said. She believes that Dave and Linda Underhill, having accomplished a personal goal in raising their son, Grahame, now in his early 20s, in "a nice, quiet, safe community," were ready to ramble. Underhill sold the station, and became a consultant.



It was a consulting job in 1994 that got Underhill's foot in the door at the Tribune Co. His first contact was with Bob Gremillion, the "guiding force" behind the 1993 launch of CLTV News, according to a company bio. Gremillion is now president and publisher of Tribune's Sun-Sentinel Co.



"I was helping our papers at the beginning of convergence, working on the cable news project in Orlando," Gremillion recalled in a phone interview. "And I was doing a little consulting on the side." Gremillion got a call from an associate who was an executive at Knight Ridder. "He asked me to help him with a newscast in Philadelphia using [K-R's] Inquirer newspaper staff and putting it on a Tribune TV station. He needed it off the ground in a week.



"Someone recommended Dave, who had sold his radio station. He had the engineering and broadcasting background we needed to get this newscast off the ground. Dave did such a good job that I used him more and more - and finally hired him."



Underhill has climbed quickly since his arrival in 1996 as director of newspaper/broadcast projects for the Tribune Publishing Co. He became vice president/video and audio of Tribune Publishing, and general manager of Tribune Regional Programming in May 1997. He was appointed to his present title of vice president, intergroup development, in October 1999.



His technical leanings don't make him one of those who believe that the near-term destiny of newspapers is to be embedded on computer chips or wireless satellite relays. "I believe we'll be printing on newsprint for the foreseeable future," he said.



He feels that newspaper writing will evolve, as will TV news and the way media Web sites are operated. "Do you write differently for the Web? I think you will," he said. "You may not yet. But as we add more rich media to the Web, we're going to have more storytelling done with pictures, with graphics, video, other things. Maybe the graphics will have to be different. Maybe graphs and charts and illustrations have to be motion-enabled and interactive to the user in ways that neither television nor print media are today."



One promising current example is the use of streaming-video segments on the latimes.com Web site that illuminates how one of its reporters does his work. The interactive special, "A Day in the Life of A Campaign Reporter," is a TV magazine-style look at the work of Edwin Chen, who covers the Gore campaign for the newspaper (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/elect2000/pres/trail).



Once home computers get the speed and bandwidth to make video a tool rather than just a toy, convergence between video and print news gathering might be something all sides can live with. "The definition of content is changing," Underhill said. "Content is what people want to use on the Web. What are some of the hottest sites on the Web? Search engines. It's a function, a utility, and helps me sort out and find the things I want.



"Journalists have been helping people sort out confusing situations and stories and facts and helping lead them to what they want and what they need to know for generations. We're simply changing from the one-to-all model that is the newspaper or TV or radio broadcast, to the one-to-you model, sorting things out and figuring out what matters, and delivering it to you.



"The idea," he added, "is to find the places where there are intersections that are beneficial. ... It's not to make a newspaper into something it is not."







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







Copright 2000, Editor & Publisher.