In nine months, the empty space had to be filled with tables, chairs, computers ... and students, ready and eager to collaborate.
Students have to buy into this multiplatform, collaborative mindset. Indeed, if convergence is to work, they have to take the lead in planning for it. In the end, they will decide how the newsroom will be configured and whether convergence occurs. If a shotgun wedding is going to be required, this is when you’ll normally start getting the invitations ready.
VIDEO: Fruit calls developing the collaborative mindset “the toughest issue in this whole thing.”
Make no mistake, getting students to the nuptials is not easy. Students are transient; they’re in the newsroom for a year or two and then graduate. Participation in student media is pretty much voluntary and can chew up enormous amounts of time for less than modest remuneration. It’s amazing we keep them engaged as long as we do.
On top of that, most are bound to a legacy medium. They came to college wanting to be a newspaper reporter or a television anchor. They don't give up those ambitions easily.
To get the students and faculty involved, we created a task force to lead the move to convergence. Fruit appointed a new graduate student, Susan Kirkman Zake, to head the task force. Zake, however, was not just another new master's candidate. She had just resigned after 20 years with the Akron Beacon Journal, most recently serving as Managing Editor for Multimedia and Special Projects. This was a match made you know where.
VIDEO: Susan Kirkman: The core group “stuck around and came [to meetings] religiously.”
Initially, about 30 students and 12 faculty and staff comprised the group, but it wasn’t long before there was a hard core of ‘collabotuers’: about a dozen students, half as many faculty and staff.
But, remember the earlier admonition. Rarely do things go as planned. Within two weeks after the first task force meeting, we pretty much scrapped the whole process.
Logic, forethought lead to bumpy start