Convergence as a form of Journalism takes place in the newsroom when media practitioners collaborate to produce multiple products for various platforms to reach a massive audience with interactive content, continuously round the clock.
The prime reason why convergence is spreading worldwide is due to media ownership, when one strong media company owns several platforms. This encourages cross-promotion and content sharing among the print, radio, television and online media. It is obvious when one large media company owns several platforms, it can reduce costs by sharing resources. Efficiency costs at all level increases, and a more good quality of news is provided to reach a larger audience, and consequently, to maximize profits.
As audiences become more discriminating, selective and sophisticated in their choices of the media forms and content, it is inevitable that convergent journalists must cater to their specific needs and desires. Hence audiences will be fragmented and media companies must exploit technology into more broad-based media to satisfy the audiences.
In Malaysia, there is an initial and small beginning forward Convergent Journalism. There is a high concentration of media ownership by Media Prima Bhd and Chinese tycoon Tiong Hiew King, who as yet, have not consolidated their resources to create a broad-based media.
However, in the print sector, the popular English newspaper, The Star, owned by Star Publications (Malaysia)Bhd, have been set up a Multimedia Desk to produce video or audio clips(http://thestar.com.my/mmedia/video)on its online news portal. This online video is merely focus on current and controversy issues.
In addition, The Star also launched a Malay news site—http://www.mstar.com.my/, in order to enter the Malay market without a newspaper. Besides, Mandarin-based newspaper, Nanyang Siang Pau, not only publish it daily, but also separately runs a television broadcast on its online websites http://www.nanyang.com//.It is run by theirs own broadcast journalist and cameraman, and supported by the newsroom resources.
The alternative media, online newspaper, Malaysiakini (http://www.malaysiakini.com/) and Merdekareview (http://www.merdekareview.com/) has a different scenario. Although they also produce video clip for their websites, but due to its limited resources, both online media’s reporters always perform the role of still photographer or video-cameraman as well. This brings into question the quality of news reporting when reporters are obliged to carry out multi-tasking roles without enough professional training.
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