Coming to Terms with Convergence Journalism: Cross-Media as a Theoretical and Analytical Concept

Abstract

As a result of the emergence of convergent ‘media houses’ at all levels of news journalism, few modern media organizations publish on only one platform. Changing professional practices related to this raise a number of important questions about the relationship between organizational strategies, new technologies, and everyday news journalism. This article addresses these developments from two perspectives, news work and news texts, through the concept of ‘cross-media’. This concept describes communication or production where two or more media platforms are involved in an integrated way. The article argues that in order to be more precise for theoretical and analytical purposes we have to distinguish between cross-media communication, and cross-media production processes. The article concludes by outlining a model that integrates the perspectives of news work and news texts in convergence journalism.