WaPo Radio post mortem offers convergence lessons
David Johnson August 29th, 2007
Marc Fisher, WaPo radio writer, turns his blog on his own with a lengthy post mortem answering the question why Washington Post Radio died. For those out of listening range (like a good deal of the D.C. metro area), WaPo and Bonneville got together to create a radio station that would feature in-depth news programming created by and featuring print reporters. I know: Sounds like a good idea, but it turns out that no one was listening. So, Bonneville is pulling the plug at the end of September after about a year on the air and turning the transformer over to the classic talk radio shoutfests, cause boy, they need more outlets (right!). Avoiding the marketing and signal strength issues that also hobbled the experimental station, Fisher focuses on the convergence content conundrum. In reading it, I found food for thought for newspapers who want to build online TV studios and broadcasters who are trying to shovel teleprompters into Web sites. Please read, ponder, and discuss.
4 Comments Add your own
1. Anony Mouse | August 29th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Anybody forced into one of those shotgun convergence marriages (which came about thanks to the hype over tbo.com) should recognize the pattern: newspapers hate broadcasters - after initial excitement, broadcasters grow to resent newspaper attitude - management tries to force convenience - online gets caught in the middle and begins to follow familiar allegiance paths (newspaper web vs. TV web) and all hope and promise flies out the window!
Look at any of the highly-touted convergence marriages and you’ll find more separation that cooperation. For God’s sake, KTLA anchors were burning copies of the LA Times on the Morning Show set for crying out loud!
2. David Johnson | August 29th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
i’m also starting to wonder if ‘convergence’ is a buzzword that has jumped the shark. or maybe it was just a concept we needed to use as a stopgap while we got our heads around the multimedia capabilities of the online platform.
there’s a growing desire to create superjournalists who embody the ‘platypus concept’ - those jacks-and-jills-of-all-trades who can report for and create platform agnostic content. they may be versatile and flexible and a better salary bargain, but if they are masters of none, will the masters of particular media trump them with a higher quality, specialized product?
3. Steve Safran | August 29th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I’m not sure combining print and radio was what we mean by “convergence,” although it was an interesting experiment. Convergence, as we bandy it about at LR anyway, generally means a coming-together of new tech and old. There was nothing new about either of these technologies.
And that people who were trained in one discipline turned out not as polished in another? Shocking.
While we wring our hands and quietly enjoy the misfortunes of others who try new things, a new generation of journalists adds members to its ranks every day who do not give a shit about their platform. They don’t go into paroxysms when one of their own gives a condensed version of a “newspaper” story on the radio. They don’t flip out when someone’s presentation isn’t “broadcast quality.”
They just do the news.
As long as the Vs Thinking continues among the rank and file, all we do is hurt our own careers and companies.
4. Kostas | November 27th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
interesting
Leave a Comment
(Please keep URLs out of the comment body or the spam filter will block you.)Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed