Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Media Convergence and Multimedia Journalism- Natasha Hunkins

Media Convergence:

Media convergence is the ability for multiple media platforms to produce, report and distribute news to a host of audiences by way of numerous media outlets. This is achieved by employing interactive content, cross promotion and content sharing.

An example of media convergence would be the partnering of NPR’s online website with different public radio organizations from across the United States for the production of NPR’s podcasts. NPR gathers content like news, music and commentary from the partnering radio stations and then features them in its podcasts. These podcasts are broken up into a range of topics that include News, Arts, Health, Humor, Politics, and Books and are easily accessible on NPR’s website. By sharing news content and then distributing it in through their individual media platforms, NPR online and the partnering radio organizations exemplify media convergence.

http://www.npr.org/rss/pod/partners.html


Multimedia Journalism:

NPR is also an example of a converged media outlet that employs multimedia journalism across multiple media platforms. NPR has a radio station that features live broadcasting, an online website that features online print stories and podcasts, and NPR Mobile, a smartphone application that includes both live radio streaming of its programs, as well as audio and graphics which accompany print news stories. Each of these media platforms share news content, but present and distribute it differently.

Through these varying media outlets, and by way of structural convergence, NPR has made news available to a larger audience when they want it and in the form they want it. NPR is able to deliver the news to a person driving home from work listening to the radio, a person behind their desk browsing the web, or a person walking down the street checking their news through NPR's phone app.

http://www.npr.org/

1 comment:

  1. Your example of NPR as a news organization that creates multimedia content is accurate. Once NPR produced audio content exclusively, and has branched out on the web. However, your example for convergence doesn't quite work. Those local stations providing podcasts are already affiliate partners. If a TV broadcast network or a website provided the podcasts, that would be a better example.

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