Convergence Journalism Analysis

The convergence module has been a very different and very beneficial experience. It has given me the opportunity to get an idea of what working in the journalism industry and working for a multimedia company like the BBC is like. The module started off shakily because it was a new module and it took a while to get to grips with everything involved. As the weeks went on, however, the convergence module improved as everyone developed the necessary skills to successfully work together and bring together the different forms of media.
Online News was the most enjoyable of the news days. I think I preformed well on both occasions as editor, although there was a vast improvement from week 1 to week 6. This is mostly due to the fact that at the beginning no one, including myself was really sure what to do. In online news there is a big dependence from all the other teams, as you are essentially leading the news prospects. I feel we could have been better at this on both weeks but still did a good job of finding the important stories. There could definitely have been more of an emphasis on finding original news.
In online news there is also a dependence on everyone else for audio and video content, particular quotes and story leads that other teams have obtained. It often proved difficult coordinating this and a piece of audio promised to us at 12pm might not have been delivered until 3pm. This is mostly due to the nature of the radio and TV news days, though, as having a bulletin means that deadlines are more important to them than in online news.
It was sometimes difficult to communicate between the groups and maybe having two convergence coordinators might be better than having one, or perhaps a separate team, who’s sole purpose is convergence, who ensure everyone has everything they need. The coordinators did, however, do a fantastic job. The final difficulty of online news, and the convergence module as a whole was the size of the team. As an editor I found it difficult to find something for everyone to do. This meant that reporters had to team up and sometimes people were left with nothing to do.
I was really pleased with my team’s work and feel they couldn’t have performed any better. They produced a great standard of work and were good at finding their own stories to follow. They, for the most part, listened to their editor and filled the Buzz website with well-written and informative articles. My sub editors, Ben Sophie and Luke (deputy editor) did a good job of proof reading and editing the articles.
Radio news was one of the more difficult news days and I feel this was mostly due to lack of direction from our lecturers. These seemed to be the slowest news days and I was generally just on editing duty. Because there weren’t enough stories to cover I teamed up with other reporters and edited and wrote scripts for their work so that I had something to do. The bulletins, however, were successful, apart from one, on the first radio day, that ran late due to technical difficulties and no fault of the team. I think El did well as the editor especially in this situation where she was under a lot of pressure.
For the second radio news day, Ben and I organized a round table discussion on euthanasia. We asked one member of each of the features and news teams to join us in the studio to discuss the day’s hottest topic. This went really well and I edited it into a finished podcast which was uploaded to the buzz website. We were encouraged after the first radio news day to produce more stand-alone features for buzz, during our news day. This advice should have been given to us earlier as we were not aware we could stray this much from the original brief. This allowed us to use extra time productively and meant no one was left being idle, something which would have been very welcome in week 2.
TV news has never been my favourite area of journalism but during convergence, to my surprise, I really enjoyed the TV news days. In the first week, El, Tania and I travelled to Dorchester to cover an auction where a vase was sold for £625,000. I did all of the filming and editing for this package and was very pleased with the final product. I was happy with the efficiency of my editing as I managed to have the package ready in a very short space of time before the bulletin.
On the second TV news day, I stood in for Max as editor, which was a terrifying prospect. I started off a little shakily as I’d never been editor for TV before and wasn’t totally sure what to be doing. As the day went on, however, I improved and the team produced a good number of packages. I also had the radio and online news teams to rely on for consultation over prospects and content. The 1pm read went off without a hitch and I got good feedback from the visiting NCTJ board member. The 4pm bulletin was a different story. This bulletin ran over an hour late, something I was hugely disappointed about but the fault lay with no one. The bulletin was still of high quality and I’m happy with it. I was also vision mixer on the day because no one else can do it and I made a few mistakes because of nerves and the stress of the bulletin running late but otherwise it was fine. I was pleased with the team’s work and think I did a good job, considering, I was sort of dropped in at the deep end. I could have, though, been a little stricter with my team to ensure we went to bulletin on time. I think, perhaps, I was too easy on them, which lead to time keeping difficulties.
The online features days were the hardest of the news days because prospects are much harder to find and you have to be more original when coming up with angles. They are also the hardest in terms of convergence because the other groups are producing news content and you aren’t. The Features team feels a little more cut off than the other groups. During these news days I didn’t produce a huge amount of work and found myself spending a lot of time doing nothing. I feel I could have tried harder to look for original feature ideas and I’m disappointed with how much work I actually produced on the features news days. I did however produce two pieces of work I am happy with, especially my St. Patrick’s Day comment piece. In this article I used some audio given to me by the radio team and linked back to a news story written by Nick Summers from the online news team. This I feel is a good example of convergence.
I feel features allows a lot more freedom for experimentation than I took advantage of and I wish I had tried a few more ideas and produced some more, better, work on these news days. I think Oli did a good job as editor, ensuring everyone had work to do and finding good original feature ideas in the morning before both days.
When put into practice convergence can be a bit hectic. It is very difficult to organize and coordinate even with the assigned convergence coordinator roles. So much is going on that often important or stories can be missed or forgotten about. This means that the quality of the news being broadcast isn’t as good as it good be. There are also problems with the size of teams and assigning everyone roles. Overall, though, I really enjoyed the convergence news days and think I’ve learned a lot. They are the closest we have to experiencing working in a real industry and helped me hone my teamwork skills as well as my writing and news finding abilities. I still feel like I could improve in terms of finding original stories to cover and this is my main aim for the future.