After two years, and a few dropped stitches, says Tampa Tribune senior vice president and executive editor Gil Thelen, Tampa's converged newsroom has little trouble with getting breaking and daily news on all three platforms.

But it wasn't without a lot of angst, complaints, missteps and aggravation. Some employees quit rather than change their way of doing journalism. Many more grumbled and went along. And a few rode the bull into the ring with equal parts fear and exhilaration.

	Jane Stevens On encouraging reporters to branch out

This year, according to almost every editor interviewed for this story, is the year for the News Center to become facile in in-depth reporting across platforms. Reporters will have to develop enterprise reporting with each other, instead of leaving the responsibility to editors and producers. Each reporter will have to know her or his counterpart in the other two media, work with that person, and share resources and information. 

This is also the year to try to incorporate more interactive components in special projects. Thelen was a little vague on examples, but speculated that in the upcoming elections the News Center might solicit and incorporate citizens' questions in daily reporting and perhaps build a candidate database of local elections so that people could find out which candidates matched their views.

With a more powerful news organization comes more responsibility to its community, says WFLA news director Forrest Carr. So, the News Center will debut an ombudsmen project across all three platforms. "It's called the citizen's voice project. We're building a converged statement of principles," says Carr. "We will state publicly what we stand for and then provide a mechanism for the public to hold us to it."

As the News Center pushes ahead into the unmapped territory of convergence, other vague and disturbing challenges appear that force journalists to question their basic way of working, says Tribune senior multimedia editor Pat Minarcin. He points out that traditionally, television and newspaper journalists react to events. But the twin forces of convergence and multimedia will force journalists to provide more context and continuity, which requires more planning, teamwork, and providing the type of depth impossible in television and print. "We're learning an entirely new way of thinking and working and partnering. Those are the kinds of challenges I'm talking about when we talk about revolutionizing the culture."

The News Center has learned that it has a long way to go, and yet it's ahead of everyone else in the journalism pack. "Right now we're all trying to think multimedia," says Kate MacCormack, Tribune team leader for pop culture. "But I can say it's just really, really hard when you know what you have to do for the newspaper. When every moment, every day you need to think outside the box on what could be done, but you do want to take care of your world first. We're still struggling with that."

Convergence Turning Points

1996
WFLA-TV needs a new building. The Tampa Tribune is outgrowing its offices. Stewart Bryan, chairman and CEO of Media General, parent company of both news organizations, decides to create some synergy by putting the newsrooms together in one $40 million building.

June 1997
News managers from three news organizations begin meeting to plan the move and new working relationship.

March 2000
WFLA, Tribune and TBO.com move into the News Center. It takes two months. All Tribune reporters who often work in the field receive laptop computers with special docking stations so that they can file breaking stories from the field to TBO.com.

July 2000
Massive fire in Ybor, Tampa's historic neighborhood, demonstrates ability for three media to work together on big breaking news story.

January 2001
Special series about Tampa Bay environment demonstrates that enterprise reporting can work across all three platforms.

July 2001
After wasting time discussing stories that end up on only one platform, "pillars of content" established to define stories and topics worth converging.

August 2001
Media General's information technology experts debut BudgetBank, a common story planning system they invent after Tribune and WFLA miss each other's stories too often.

December 2001
Although Tribune revenues drop 8 percent, mostly because classified help-wanted ads dry up in the recession, it makes an extra $4 million in sales it wouldn't have received pre-convergence from companies advertising across platforms.

January 2002
Media General's information technology gurus debut special chat room software after Tribune and WFLA editors and reporters have trouble communicating on breaking stories. It still has bugs.

February 2002
About three-fourths of the Tribune and WFLA photographers now cross-equipped with video gear and still cameras.

February 2002
Five months after being appointed senior editor of multimedia, Pat Minarcin is finally sprung from heading war coverage team to take News Center to the next stage of convergence.