Newspapers hurting multimedia owners vs. trend to VJ

[Another OMB]

Multimedia companies like Gannett and Media General are being dragged down by the losses in their newspaper divisions. Gannett just announced a write down of between $2.5 billion and $3 billion.

The buzzword at those companies, and others, has been "convergence", as reporters and photographers provide content for television, newspaper and the web.

But will the possible demise of the newspaper industry force those multimedia companies to divest themselves of their papers, eliminating a major part of the convergence that was/is going to be the next big thing?

I think part of the push toward VJs is that these companies are trying to do more with less, since the companies are losing so much because of the newspapers. I know Gannett is big on "backpack journalists" (VJs) and Media General has some, too.

I'm wondering: if they do ever get out of newspapers (and that's a big "if"), will that slow down the migration toward VJs at all, do you think? Or do you think VJs are inevitable because of the economics at the TV stations alone?

[John M.]

I don't know that convergence and VJs are necessarily related. I live near Tampa, where Media General's WFLA-TV and Tampa Tribune share a newsroom. I've noticed things such as photos in the paper credited to WFLA photojournalists, columns and articles penned by WFLA reporters and Tribune reporters appearing on WFLA newscasts. And all of them producing material for their shared web portal, tbo.com.

If my unscientific sample is accurate, the multi-tasking involves working the same job across several platforms more than one-man-banding for one outlet.

Some of this change may be driven by people's individual interests and abilities. The Tribune has a sports reporter named Bill Ward, whose duties -- through his own initiative -- have evolved to include shooting both still photos and video. His versatility earned him a trip to the Turin Olympics, where he wrote traditional articles for the paper, kept a blog, shot photos and edited nat video packages for the web site. Now that's a backpack journalist!

I have also twice seen WFLA photographers voice their own packages but I'm not a regular viewer so I don't know how often that happens.

[Another OMB]

I've given it some more thought, and I doubt that Gannett or Media General would ever get out of the newspaper biz, at least not until newspapers are gone completely. And they wouldn't sell the newspaper division because they were a newspaper business to begin with. Also, it's the TV stations that are keeping them afloat financially.

But that gets me back to one of my original questions. I think one of the reasons these companies are so big on VJs is that their newspapers are bleeding so much money that the company is looking for anything possible to cut costs on the TV side. That being said, they're likely to keep pushing that. I wonder if other TV stations that are not owned by companies that also own newspapers will feel the same financial pressure to go to VJs?