Practicing Convergence Journalism teaches budding journalists how to make the most of digital technology to tell their stories effectively across multiple media platforms in print, audio, video and online. Janet Kolodzy addresses multi-media and cross-media thinking, organizing, reporting and producing for both short-form spot news and long-form features. Her approach focuses on storytelling principles, not just specific technical practices, providing journalists with the mindset and skills they need to adapt their writing and reporting for the tools of today and tomorrow.

With this book and the aid of its companion website, students learn how to:

• Develop a cross-media mode of journalistic thinking that will result in stories suitable for a fast-paced, multitasking and mobile audience.

• Decide when visuals are useful and necessary, and understand how to capture, select and organize them to effectively enhance a reader s understanding of a story.

• Put together various elements of storytelling (writing, audio, moving and still pictures) for an interactive journalistic experience.

Practicing Convergence Journalism teaches journalists how to make the most of digital technology to tell their stories effectively across multiple media platforms in print, audio, video, and online. In this text, Janet Kolodzy identifies two types of journalistic stories: the short-form, or immediate, quick turn-around story, once called "spot news," and the longer-form or depth news feature that involves a more narrative and interactive "arc." She addresses multi-media and cross-media thinking, organizing, reporting and producing for both types of news stories. Her approach focuses on storytelling principles, not just specific technical practices, providing journalists with the mindset and skills to use and adapt their writing and reporting for the tools of today and tomorrow.

With this text, students learn how to:

• Develop a cross-media way of journalistic thinking that blends the values and approaches from traditional media into planning, gathering, organizing and producing news for a fast-paced, multitasking and mobile audience

• Prepare an easy, facile and adaptive way of using words to get news and information across to audiences who have varying amounts of time to read and absorb it, as well as visuals to get news and information across to audiences who want to experience it

• Decide when visuals are useful and necessary, and how to capture, select and organize them to effectively enhance the understanding of a story

• Put together various elements of storytelling (writing, audio, moving and still pictures) for a journalistic experience the audience ultimately controls.

Book Companion Site For at least a decade, media prognosticators have been declaring the death of radio, daily newspapers, journalistic ethics, and even journalism itself. But in Convergence Journalism_an introductory text on how to think, report, write, and present news across platforms_Janet Kolodzy predicts that the new century will be an era of change and choice in journalism. Journalism of the future will involve all sorts of media: old and new, niche and mass, personal and global. This text will prepare journalism students for the future of news reporting.