Seventy employees at The Tampa Tribune will soon be told that they've been laid off. The cuts are evidence that not even the once heralded savior of newspapers -- convergence -- can protect us from the downturn assailing revenues.
The Tribune is one of the only newspapers in the country that owns both a newspaper and television station, which is No. 1 in its market. The Web site serving both, TBO.com, is well respected. And yet, 70 people will lose their jobs.
I'm a big believer in convergence. It's a big reason why I work at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, which owns a 24-hour cable news station. Convergence helps offer readers the story in whatever medium they want. Achieving that level of service should result in happier customers, and hopefully more of them. Access to experienced videographers and professional video production equipment should be an obvious advantage for any Web site. But not even convergence was a strong enough tactic to overcome the continuing drop in revenues felt across the industry.
In the end, The Tampa Tribune faces the same dilemmas as every other newspaper. Convergence is just one tool among many needed to complete a turnaround.
Comments (2)
And yet, when you look at the tampa bay web sites, they still have horrible problems - why are there separate web sites for tbo, tribune and the tv station? why does the search function make the noice of a giant vaccuum cleaner (i.e., suck)?
tbo.com is one of (at least) five types of convergence - an evolutionary dinosaur in some ways. perhaps in the end, their method too far ahead of its time. from things i've heard, they never really got buy-in from the ground-level on the convergence model, and they've suffered. that's all second-hand, though.
still, after reading comments from a recent post on the ICM weblog about john allman's speech to the school where i teach, it seems obvious there are some issues at tampa that convergence doesn't fix.
Posted by Bryan Murley | April 11, 2007 7:15 AM
Posted on April 11, 2007 07:15
I know no one in Tampa who would say their model for convergence is perfect. That doesn't mean some things aren't being done right.
My motto on just about everything is that if you can't think of two things you like or agree with, then you're just not trying.
Posted by Lucas | April 12, 2007 9:34 PM
Posted on April 12, 2007 21:34