Convergence Case Study: Florida Today

Florida Today and WKMG

Primary partners: Florida Today – 90,000 daily, 120,000 Sunday. Floridatoday.com – 106,000 unique page views daily WKMG – Channel 6, CBS affiliate in Orlando. Nielsen DMA 15. Ownership Gannett owns Florida Today and Floridatoday.com. Post-Newsweek owns WKMG. Structure Florida Today and Floridatoday.com are located in Melbourne, Fla. WKMG is located in Orlando, which is about an hour’s drive northwest of Melbourne. Driving forces behind partnerships Michael J. Coleman, president and publisher, Florida Today; Derek Osenenko, editor, Florida Today; Henry Maldonado, general manager, WKMG. Making it happen Bob Stover, managing editor, Florida Today; Traci Bauer, assistant managing editor/ multimedia, Florida Today; Skip Valet, news director, WKMG. What they do: Florida Today Editor Osenenko describes the paper’s efforts as two pronged. First is the partnership with WKMG and second is what he describes as a “growing Gannett coalition."

After a year of experimentation, Florida Today and WKMG entered a formal, written partnership agreement in April. Typical activities include:

Florida Today’s online editor appears on WKMG’s 6 a.m. newscast to talk about the top two stories in the Melbourne area. Florida Today hopes to get on the evening newscast at some point. In addition, WKMG has a bureau located in the Florida Today building.

During space shuttle launches, Florida Today’s space reporting team provides live remotes for WKMG. “One thing driving the partnership,” explains Osenenko, “is a desire to play off the areas where we have local expertise such as space, business, health and local and state sports.”

Every Friday, Florida Today’s lead prep football writer provides a preview of the big high school game of the week. And Florida Today reporters do talk-backs during the day on significant breaking news.

A Florida Today editor or reporter appears on WKMG’s Sunday public affairs show, Flashpoint.

Growing Gannett coalition

The three Gannett papers in Florida (Florida Today, Fort Myers and Pensacola) and two Gannett television stations (Tampa-St. Petersburg and Jacksonville) are working together so much that the stations plan to support the company’s growing state capital bureau in Tallahassee, which currently has three reporters and is managed from Melbourne.

A “signature” creation of the coalition is a state government Web site that, Osenenko says, is one of the “definitive sources of state government news.” It includes updates of legislation, bios of legislators, among other things. The site continues to grow with visits coming from all the Gannett properties and apparently is attracting political junkies from throughout the state.

One highlight of the coalition’s efforts was a 16-page newspaper report on the problems of Florida’s beach erosion, demonstrating that Florida had ignored codes designed to protect its beaches. The package features a Web site with a movie produced by Florida Today and still photos show beaches today and in the past, among other things. The television stations prepared video segments that broke the newspaper reports to follow. The partners also worked with USA Today to get the special section inserted into USA Today in the Tampa and Jacksonville markets.

Strategic focus
News is the primary focus of the partnership. “We wanted to create another platform to deliver the news,” Stover says. “We think this increases the readers’ reliance on us and increases circulation. And it drives traffic to the website.” Next comes promotion, Stover says.

Keys to making the partnership work

Understanding the culture in each other’s newsrooms
Florida Today has had to adjust to the speed of the television newsroom, which is much more spontaneous and not as planned. Newspaper people have had to learn to be more economical with words when telling a story on the air. And although Florida Today editors and reporters thought there might be ethical issues related to the cultures, they have found them to be minor. Stover says, “The fact we’re both owned by very large media companies that have experience with both media is a positive factor here.”

Web site
The biggest single thing that helped the TV partnership was the paper’s earlier independent emphasis on creating a dynamic, immediate, layered news Web site. This experience taught editors that stories have to be repackaged for specific media and it got them past the fear of breaking big stories outside the regular print cycle. The paper now breaks news regularly throughout the day, sometimes having as many as a dozen fresh news stories on the site by mid-afternoon. Also, even before signing the partnership with WKMG, the newspaper had emphasized video, Flash and audio enhancements for the Web. This experience made paper more comfortable in dealing with the TV stations’ emphasis on video.

Routine converged activities

Dave Larimer, a former Florida Today managing editor, is at the eye of the convergence operation. As online news editor, he starts his shift at 6 a.m. In this role he updates the web site with breaking stories until mid-afternoon. A reporter works for him to provide fresh local stories, following up on stories and making checks with local police agencies. At 6:20 a.m. Larimer goes live on the WKMG morning newscast, giving highlights from Brevard County and Florida Today. He also tells WKMG’s assignment editor about stories the station might want to have itsreporters pursue. Larimer is expected to start giving a similar update on the noon news broadcast in the near future. Editors say Larimer is perfect for his convergence position because, as an experienced print editor, he understands the topics that are important to local readers and has experience making judgements about news play.

The television station gives the newspaper a bureau, of sorts, in Orlando. This is helpful because local readers see Orlando news on their Orlando-based TV stations and expect to see something about the major events in the local paper the next morning. Prior to this partnership, Florida Today was at a disadvantage because much AP copy from that area doesn’t move until the day after the Orlando Sentinel prints it.

Florida Today features WKMG’s weatherman on its weather page and used the station’s expertise in the pages of its annual hurricane guide.

The partners freely repackage information from each other’s web site and link to WKMG’s video. Newspaper credits TV; TV credits the newspaper.

Florida Today communicates regularly every day with the TV newsroom, sharing story ideas and information.

Noteworthy examples

Billy’s Journal: Billy Cox, a features writer and columnist, frequently repackages his stories into two- to three- minute features for the news broadcasts. The segments are called Billy’s Journal. Cox writes the script and works closely with a WKMG photographer to completely repackage his story with video, interviews and voiceover. He works with the photographer to edit and produce the finished piece.

Statewide project: The “Paradise at Risk” project, an investigation into the cost of beach erosion in Florida, was a landmark initiative that showed how we could use multiple platforms on a statewide basis and serve our local markets at the same time.

Florida Today decided to pursue the topic because beaches drive tourism and development, and provide an important part of the Florida Lifestyle. Gannett newspapers in Brevard, Fort Myers and Pensacola joined with Gannett television stations in Tampa-St. Petersburg and Jacksonville to examine the economic and political issues of beach erosion. Tallahassee and Washington bureaus also contributed. Among the findings: The state has allowed almost 5,000 homes, condos and hotels to be built in areas that are subject to erosion. More than half of them are inside a state-designated critical erosion zone. Editors also had some fun with the topic. For instance, the special section included an article about readers testing the sand from 20 beaches statewide.

Using a pool of editors, reporters and photographers from all our properties, we produced:

• A 16-page report that not only demonstrates how serious the issue is, but explores the topic from a comprehensive statewide perspective. The report was distributed in the Sunday editions of the three Florida papers – a circulation of about 300,000.


• A Web site was especially built to support the project. The site is rich with extra content, including video and audio presentations by our online staff and broadcast segments prepared by our television partners.
  
Broadcast segments in the two Gannett TV markets were used to advance a reprint of the section on July 29 inside USA TODAY in those markets. The USA TODAY distribution – a company first – added 42,000 copies to the circulation of the section.

• A GNS article based on the project appeared July 29 in all editions of USA TODAY.


• A Sunday morning talk show on the day of publication dedicated to the subject on WKMG. In addition, part of the Web site for the beach project included a pop quiz for readers about beaches. And for a week leading up to publication, WKMG included a question from the quiz on its morning news program.

Polling Opportunities: WKMG and the Gannett television partner in Jacksonville have computerized polling resources and have used them to produce stories on a statewide and regional basis. For instance, WKMG polled central Florida residents about their views on education funding and the newspaper used it as the focal point of a special section on that subject. WKMG also produced a poll that measured the space exploration knowledge of central Florida residents. And Gannett’s Jacksonville station had its polling firm conduct a statewide poll about election issues surrounding the governor’s race.