Good morning from Newsplex, on the last day. Discussion of how they are bringing convergence into the curriculum at USC.

• bring broadcast and print classes together to do stories. This is like what is happening at Media General in the world of work.
• What is convergence? Answering this question is key to teaching. There is not agreement on this, and it needs to be answered for the particular faculty.
• How are faculty members in bcast taking to the introduction of convergence? Currently, they do a newscast like Newsbeat, but daily as the capstone--modeled on local TV. Faculty ask--why bother as they don't see the local workplaces doing this. Question may involve are you a tech school or are you academe? Are you training the students or educating them for the future? The "evidence" is that students are increasingly getting jobs because they are well-versed in one of the concentrations, but have expy with the other media. Might not be necessary in first job, but will help them succeed in second or third job.
• USC is adding convergent components into the already existing classes, as in adding webpages to Intro classes. Or having the print and bcast students work together during the semester. Often focus on "awareness" that there are various ways to tell the story, not necessarily on tech mastery or excellence in the multi-skill media.
• Design of newsplex like lab--must have a TV area, must have a newsroom, must have a classroom or teaching facility, too.
• Define it for your institution, and then how will you teach it at the facility you have. A "fixed" definition of convergence is not useful. Keep it flexible because the tech and its implementations are changing so quickly. Future projection--what will job be like in 10 years? Each teacher needs to think abou this and teach this. Vision of big news agencies 'shedding' staff and re-hiring them as freelancers. Also, looking toward robot writer to process news releases and documents and an editor to look at the copy. The robotic writer could let a reporter be out in the field. Though this is a dilemma as the corporate mentality might replace the reporter with the robot and sacrifice quality in news wiriting.
• Is student news media converging? Paper has website. Radio station is webcasting. They have a little TV network with an hour or two of bcasting per week. They are not working together now. J dept students provide the news for the radio station. They report that their connection with their student media is tenuous--they have a faculty advisor, but they don't get involved with them in production things.
• Freelance camera crews to go and do TV packages that will sold to stations--it is happpening on the national level and will filter down to midscale markets. This is a bit like news services. There might be a market for reporters to go and out cover stories they think are important and then market them to audience without corporate or editorial layer.
What will students be a part of?
• could do it in capstone classes to do convergence
• Must work the skills in gradually and over time, so that when the students get a story idea they will have the awareness and basic skills to carry out the story. "Open gym" nights--have the convergence facility open for drop-ins to let students experiment. The big newsplex "unfreezes" the habits, but the ongoing use and practice can take place in any lab. Want to bring down the friction betw print and bcast students before a single capstone course. Need to get students past the idea they being a journalist means doing one single thing e.g. I want to be a on-air talent, etc. Once you start doing the convergence projects, the resistance falls back. The combination of classes that write for one medium in a class, and then submit the stories to another class (e.g. writing for bcast sends scripts to copy-editing class) for editing, this improves everyone's work. In some cases, putting things in print for bcasters transforms their thinking, as will putting a print student up on a stand-up or online.