"Our view was that the most responsible thing we could do was to prepare students for a world that, more and more, was likely to be one in which they would not be able to specialize in one medium." —Trevor Brown, Dean IU School of Journalism

Back in the day let's say the early 80s, we newspaper reporters used to watch the TV reporters try to pronounce their way through the word traps in the stories that had already run in the newspaper.

"Authorities authenticated the string of arsons, which apparently occurred as if by an occult hand..." Ha. Say that three times.

Yes, we actually used to write stories with difficult-to-pronounce verbiage. It was all part of the game of being a newspaper reporter, and it was one of the few times we could ever get even with the glamour guzzlers under the klieg lights.

We newspaper reporters, after all, were the ones who spent time at the police stations and dug through the stack of incident reports, talked to desk sergeants and drank coffee with them late at night. We were the ones who listened to their dispairing, diheartening diatribes.

The TV reporters never had time for the desk sergeants. They never had time to sort through the paperwork. The TV reporters would flap in, do a quick interview, and then do their "stand-up" somewhere near the scene of the a) action b) crime. The most actual journalism they did, it seemed, was to listen to the police scanners and follow the ambulances.Or sometimes just cruised the fast lanes looking for bang-bang.

The real stuff -- the murders, the riots, the drug busts -- always came out first in the newspaper. Usually they just read right from the typeset columns during the six o'clock newscast, often word for word, while we laughed.

Well, nowadays, the joke's on us. Newspaper reporters are being "converged." We now need to learn how to work as television reporters as well as newspaper reporters.

What is "convergence?" Where is it headed?

A college journalism curriculum is already a cake walk for most bright kids. But imagine getting the newspaper reporters to imitate bubble-headed bleached blondes posing their way through a news program. It ought to be hysterical.

I thought about the problem when a broadcast journalism student complained the other day that they had been misled by a source. The college journalism student wanted to do a broadcast story about bullying. Specifically, she had heard that there was a program to sensitize high school students to the problem. So she got on the department list and checked out the equipment. Then she got a camera operator and producer. Then after a few hours of wrangling, found herself on the front steps of the high school with its principal. After all this preparation, he said: Um, no, there is no program to prevent bullying that he knew about.

So the journalism students came back empty handed, lamenting cruel fate and hoping that my teaching colleagues in broadcasting would not grade them too harshly.

I heard the plaintive cries and realized that they had simply gone to the wrong school. I told her that the anti-bullying programs were going on next door, at the junior high school. But now it was 2:30, and school was getting out, and someone else had the equipment, and the producer was gone.

My reaction, being an old print reporter, was this: Call them. Get back on the phone and call them, get the quotes and write the story. Easy for me to say. But for the broadcast reporters, well, at least there was still time to cover the beauty pageant.

And here is the essence of the convergence problem. If we train journalists to use all kinds of equipment all the time, to be "convergence" journalists, they will be carrying tripods and cameras and klieg lights and all kinds of other stuff, not just note pads. Now they will all have to plan their day very carefully, to be sure not to waste time or talk to too many people on the phone, so that the capital investment in their technology does not get wasted.

Convergence can be many things -- at its best, a way to cascade the flow of information from general audience to attentive specialized audiences that need detailed insights.

But what it will probably become, what it seems now destined to become, is a way for already wealthy publishers and broadcasters to sweat a few more dollars out of an already overworked staff. Newspapers are going to become like TV stations. Journalists are going to float through society trailing scads of info gear, and the real world will give way around them, treating them as the deadly info bombs that they are, while pageants are staged by the politically adept.

Its always been difficult to get behind the scenes to find the truth. But back in the old days, we didn't have a lot of equipment trailing around behind us. Heck, we didnt even have cell phones or laptops. Just trusty old notebooks and a few broken pencils. Traveling light, with what now seems like plenty of time, we were able to go many places that others could not.

I imagine that someday, not long from now, the overburdened reporters of the 21st century will envy that freedom.