One Story Vs One Outlet

As a proponent of the well-placed word, I have always felt it a little juvenile that suddenly we need flashy pictures and sound byte chunks of information to ingest our news. iMediaconnection.com, however, offered me one of the first examples of layered, multimedia storytelling that really drove the point home. This is a fresh story about Apple told in sections of video, captioned in print, available as a slideshow with a picture representing the message of each page in an abstract and funny way. http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/31194.asp Convergent media has much to offer us in the form of pooled resources. My example is AOL.com, whose home page talks about everything under the sun- from jobs to politics to celebrity gossip. Hard news and soft news converge seamlessly as the people, equipment, and cash flow belonging to at least 5 or 10 different information-gathering organizations form a conglomerate newsfeed that we can click through in 10 simple pages. It offers the most eye-catching aspects of every corner of the news world. http://www.aol.com The way I understand it, multimedia reporting tells one story many ways. Convergent media tells many stories and makes them available through one outlet. -Audrey