Lessons in Convergence by Kerry Northrup

“However, we haven’t had a lot of luck in working collaboratively with them on stories,” Burr added. “As I talk to other (partnership managers) in Florida, there is a similar pattern. The culture is so different it is hard to get them working together. What we do is share budgets every day by email at 11:30 a.m., and I talk to their assigning people after that. Then we touch base at 4:30 in the afternoon. In the course of the day, we call each other if stories break. We may say we are about to post this on our website, would you be interested in something for the 6 p.m. news. We also share sources, phone numbers on breaking news stories. The longer we do this the more we share. That has worked out well.” Communication and trust is vital to the partnership, Burr said. “Hands down, communications is our biggest hurdle. We need to do a better job of disseminating information within our own newsroom and with our news partners,” said Cynthia Garza, a Times-Union reporter, during the May 2003 training. “Much has been said about the inequalities between the relationship between First Coast News and the TimesUnion,” said Times-Union business writer Timothy Gibbons in his end-of-training evaluation. “Having reporters jump to the screen can be beneficial both to the paper and to individual reporters. First, reporters must be trained in how to make the best use of on-camera time. We need a written agreement with our news partner laying out who is responsible for what. And we need the television station to work with us to overcome the culture clash between two organizations.” “The collaboration is so dependent on the verbal communication in the morning and throughout the day about what will work and what doesn’t,” Burr said. “If you ask me, communication is everything. It’s all coordination. It’s also trust. You have to have people working together freely, not there to screw you over when you share stories. The whole thing is communication. Without good communication, you cannot react on a day-to-day basis and hour-by-hour basis. Without trust, this won’t happen.” One new area of collaboration that has been developed is the “Roads Scholar” content cross-promotion and content-sharing partnership with the TV station. A television and a newspaper reporter each report about road projects in the Jacksonville area and take questions from readers and viewers, answering them in their respective media. The stories on TV and in the newspaper cross-promote upcoming coverage in the other medium as well. “Cross promotion does work, but if you ask me to prove it, I can’t,” Burr said. “I think it works better for (the newspaper). I don’t think TV is getting a big bang out of the newspaper (promotion).”

Ifra Special Report 6.30

Another advantage for the Times-Union is more audience and more sources for reporters, Burr said. “We are reaching a whole new audience of people. Our reporters get stopped in the grocery stores (after they appear on camera). I have to think it’s having a positive impact. They also have a larger array of sources available to them.” “The median age of their audience is 26. Ours is 52,” Burr said. “By and large it’s a different group of people. TV for whatever reason is more conducive to people picking up the phone and calling whoever they see on TV. And if they know something, they talk to them. Some print reporters get calls out of the blue more than ever before. The caller says they saw them on TV and ‘Did you know this story…’ Any time you can hear from a wider group of people, it always helps.” The Times-Union’s next multimedia strategy is to incorporate radio. The idea is to provide news headlines from the newspaper through a partner news radio station owned by Cox. The AM station now runs only pre-recorded, nonlocal news feeds from CNN. The local news stories provided to the radio station would also be available online. “The idea is to promote the newspaper’s brand out there on as many platforms as possible,” Burr said. “We think the radio partnership will work hand in glove without our website. If we have to get breaking news out there on the radio, by god, it will be on the website. It will be seamless. That, to me, is the biggest positive.” After sending two groups to the Newsplex, Burr and his staff have a positive outlook on the future of convergence at the Times-Union. “Frankly, we don’t know if we’re selling more papers because of convergence. We’re just hoping that by getting our name on TV and radio, we are getting our content for our website and more people coming to our website,” Burr said.