Media Convergence and Multimedia: Priscilla Castro

As a result of the ever-evolving media world and changes in technology, media convergence has been a key factor for many news publications and media companies for them to expand their businesses to cater to a more widespread audience and also produce content that is more viable for their audiences. In today's media world, it is almost vital for media companies to immerse themselves in media convergence just to survive in today's competitive media world and stay on the their audience's radar. Companies can either reevaluate how they can produce better content or more accessible content and broaden the type of media that they produce, be it through TV, radio, print, or online. They can partner with other companies that offer such channels to them, or develop departments within their own companies to expand their own methods of distributing media. One of the largest companies that has thrived from media convergence is News Corporation, in which they integrate cable programming (Fox News), print (The New York Post, The Sun), movie studios (20th Century Fox), radio, internet and various other media platforms which has made News Corp one of the most well-known media companies around the world. Multimedia journalism is the integration of various platforms of media to gather news. Today, multiple news outlets use multimedia journalism for a single story to give the audience more insight on the story itself with visuals, detailed facts about the story, audio recordings, statistical charts and graphs, live news coverage and also message boards to allow the readers to be a part of the news as its happening. This allows the audience to be fully integrated into what media they are consuming, and especially allows the publications to having a larger impact to the audience as well. One of the most prevalent examples of the use of multimedia journalism is 9/11, and how that event was covered from when it happened to even today when each anniversary approaches. When the terrorist attacks occurred, many news outlets used photos, videos, obituaries, live coverage and various other platforms to report the event, and later on to today, stories include stories of those families affected by the tragedy and even graphs are included to show the number of casualties from 9/11. The use multimedia journalism convergence has turned around the journalism world from what is was decades ago and now allows the content to give more insight than what a reader would find on page one of the morning newspaper.