My final ONA session
“We needed to break down the silos.” Sound familiar? “We’re all going to get there together or we’re not going to there at all.” From which university are these comments originating? Answer: The panelists at this session (titled “Setting Up A Multimedia Newsroom”) are from the LA Times. It was the most recent opportunity for me to confirm that the challenges/tensions in the field are remarkably similar to the same challenges/tensions I have experienced in academe during the past few years.
For my own saneness, the point is (recalling Leslie’s point at the retreat that our College is somewhere in the “middle” of the pack) not to perseverate on the notion that we’re “behind.” Perhaps we can take comfort in knowing that some of the largest news organizations – and many if not most of the smaller ones – are at approximately the same point that the academic community is in redefining our multimedia mission. One “take home” message that I learned from this ONA session is that ONE converging assignment desk in a newsroom can be shared by several teams who pump content on the Web, on the air and to the pressroom. For example, the Times’ owned TV station (KTLA) is now setting up an assignment desk in the paper’s newsroom. Perhaps we should – in time – be thinking of additional ways that our print, web, radio and television students can collaborate to search for, consider, discuss and decide which stories to cover and how to cover them.