Mitigating "The Trade-Off"

One of my major goals as a convergence reporter is to give as much credence to my web elements as I do to my on-air elements.  While I have been trying to hone my on-air presentation skills, I think my focus has drifted somewhat from my online presentation — I made a conscious trade-off to work on my on-air elements, and focus on the web story later.  But my long-term career goal is to find a way to eliminate this trade-off:  To make solid reporting for broadcast and for online presentation go hand-in-hand; to mitigate this trade-off to the point where I can still tell a good story in both broadcast and online form without much conscious effort devoted to one element over another.

My package this week was successful in mitigating the trade-off in some ways.  I feel, in terms of the facts and content information, I achieved a very good balance and turned in a project that gets to the heart of what convergence is:  Use the best platforms to tell your story.  Here's how I used my different elements this week:

• Video Version:  I told the story of ABC Laboratories, and used it as a focal point to tell the story of Columbia's economic recovery in the midst of a recession.
• Online Text Version:  I focused on the economic forecast:  Columbia's recession, measured in terms of unemployment, may be near its end.  I featured the president of the chamber of commerce, who was largely removed from the broadcast version for time reasons, with a lot of the good foundational quotes that he gave.  (In hindsight, his interview might have worked very well as a video extra).
• Interactive Map:  I told the broader story of the state's emergence from the recession, using the economic forecast data to make an interactive map.

I did tease the interactive map in my video story, but I could increase cohesion between the content by trying to tease the map at the end of my online text version, and letting readers know that a bigger-picture version of the story was available in text on KOMU.com.

There is a lot of room for improvement, however:  While I found a very good balance in converging content, I think the quality of one element in particular — the video piece — suffered as a result of my focus being divided among three different elements.  It had strong content, but didn't have strong broadcast flow.  I didn't think I would need a standup (and still would not want to use one anyway, as I didn't really have anything to show), but I needed something to break up the visuals of the piece, which felt stagnant at times.  My ND suggested against using graphics, which I had planned on doing in concept (and was part of the reason I decided against a standup).  But looking at the script with him, I decided against it as well.  I just knew there would be a large gap of 30 seconds in the middle of the piece, between bytes, that would be just my VO track.  That's one way I can look to improve in the future, and it's one thing about this story that will always bug me.

But I have to see the glass as half-full here.  I feel I obtained, in a dayturn story, the balance of content needed in a strong convergence package.  Each element stands on its own as a newsworthy piece, when linked to the main story.  And while I need to ensure that I'm not making the trade-off of quality for balance of content, I think this piece is stronger because of variety of elements that, together, tell a complete story.