Multimedia Journalism

   Whitney Houston's passing this Saturday at the age of 48 was a perfect storm of multimedia mourning. The ambiguous nature of her death, and her turbulent past of success, beauty, and public addiction. have surprisingly generated coverage that has been more flashy than substantive.

   In the wake of Houston's death, as is often the case with early-deceased celebrities, the media have saturated the market with images of her tragic beauty. Coverage at the broadcast and video level has emphasized public and celebrity reactions, and social media have blown up with celebrities posting about the late songstress. Text and radio coverage has done a good job of holding to the fact that although prescription pill vials were found in Houston's room, her cause of death as of the time of the media storm was still undetermined.

   Perhaps the most disappointing example of coverage was the Wall Street Journal's slideshow of Houston. The journal selected only powerful images of the singer on stage, in the light which we all already knew her, rather than encouraging the reader-subject intimacy we've often seen as the strong point of the slide show format.

   The ABC video was more telling of the element of Houston's success anyway, in that it humanized the Hollywood reaction with red-carpet interviews, and twitter posts by celebrities.

   The LA Times' treatment of Houston's obituary was a great deal more informative as to the personal context of  her death, going so far as to mention her addiction in the lead. 

Convergence

   I chose to stay close to home in searching for my example of convergence to see how it might affect me in looking for a job. I found some evidence of convergence on the website for Long Beach's own Press Telegram.

   These pictures are of the homepage, and selected areas that I thought were examples of convergence. Not only is there a “Target” tab, demonstrating convergence of advertising and content, but very subtly in the upper right hand corner of the page there is link to “LA.com," a guide to Los Angeles diversions run by Los Angeles News Group .

    The Long Beach Press Telegram partnering with diversion guide out of Los Angeles is mutually benefitial. The outlet's can share content, making it easier for the Press Telegram to report on LA area events, and informing the larger newsgroup of developing stories in Long Beach. 

   The fact that the site also offers a web search powered by yahoo! is another example of convergence. YAHOO! search allows readers connect the stories published by the Press Telegram, to the bigger picture of the entire web.

 photos captured directly from