Frantic Newsrooms Lead The Way On Convergence

Newsrooms are in a process of converging mediums to shared resources. Companies can learn much from this convergence in their efforts to build a social media communications triage center.

Where once public relations, marketing and customer support were dispirit, companies may learn from the newsroom convergence and bring once separate departments together.

Dell has already taken these steps, in January 2008 - Dell’s Corporate Communications team become “Communities, Conversations and Communications.” The Dell Community Forums and Online Community Outreach are brought in with the Communications team. Customer service, corporate communications, and elements of product management come together in one department.

I am not sure which industry was the first to converge, the corporate world or journalism, but my sense is that the world of journalism has a better movement for the process of convergence. Why, because journalism deals with stories and different medium, while different departments in companies are dealing with communications, customer support and product management. Journalists have an advantage over companies in the world of convergence they share a profession. Companies have more cultural barriers to overcome, the distinction between professions, even if all converging professions serve the same customer.

Recently I was looking at the discussion around the Kent State converged newsroom, and effort to bring together all different media in one room. I was thinking that just as journalism can learn from companies’ use of semantic technologies does the converged newsroom give companies a roadmap for bringing all communications elements together in a company? What are your thoughts on this parallel convergence of media across industries?