Convergence born on the web:
TV, radio, mixed media and more

It's hard to keep up with media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and related holdings, including Fox Network, Fox News,, Sky TV and more. He bought, then sold, the pre-Web U.S. online service Delphi, which for a time looked like the New York Post online, then became iGuide, and now is TV Guide Online. The Murdoch-Delphi London counterpart also has gone through changes and hit some dead ends.

With all of the current forces for convergence of print and Web, broadcast and Web, news and entertainment, commerce and everything, it has been interesting to watch how Murdoch properties like TV Guide, Fox-TV and Fox movies promote (or don't promote) each other. The same questions fit almost every media outlet out there, so it looks like these issues will offer plenty of opportunities for Mass Comm master's theses...

On to other "broadcast" companies... ask yourself whether they're doing anything different from what the "print" media are doing on the Web; try to tell the news from the entertainment, and the self-promotion from the ad-promotion.

• PBS and NPR which are featuring Web supplements to news and more.
• CNN Interactive (now with Time-Warner links)
• CBS Television Home Page
• ABC Television Home Page
• NBC Television Home Page
• NBC meets MSN including daily news
• WRAL in Raleigh, my favorite local station site.
• The Antenna, a site about broadcasting and the Web.
• Radio & Television News Directors Foundation online.

...many more publications

NewsLink, the online service of American Journalism Review magazine includes a database indexing thousands of online newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations. The magazine's The State of the American Newspaper series is among the 1999 features worth looking at, including Ken Auletta's Synergy City, an insightful report on the Chicago Tribune Co. (also mentioned in the newspaper section), and Charles Layton and Mary Walton on the decline of statehouse coverage by the news media in general.

MediaInfo Interactive is Editor & Publisher magazine's take on e-newspapers. This newspaper industry publication keeps a watch on trends--and the bottom line--of the publishing business, online and off.

Finally, confusing the "born on the Web..." category, not only does the Web guide called Yahoo provide news from Reuters, it also provides category lists of newspapers, even Tabloids.

Please let me know when you notice that a link has stopped working.
The Web is always under construction: bob@unc.edu

School of Journalism and Mass Communication
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Last revision: 01/Mar/99

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