Convergence Calls: Multimedia Storytelling At British News Websites, by Neil Thurman and Ben Lupton of City University London, took the top paper award at the Online Journalism Symposium in 2008. Its interviews with senior British editors caught the moment when newspapers decided that online video was a battleground they could win.
The newspaper editors told the researchers they believed they could compete with broadcasters such as Sky and the BBC, and gave a specific reason for the confidence: they were not held back by television culture. Investment was rising on the assumption that video could help revive the news business.
The more interesting finding came from the other side. BBC News website editors acknowledged that simply putting television output online added nothing to an existing story. Hardly anyone watched video in the pop-up player, so the site moved to an embedded Flash player — and in trials, far more people watched when the video sat inside the story rather than in a window of its own. Deals with third-party video suppliers had often disappointed, in several cases because they delivered mainly American footage to a British audience.
The conclusion senior BBC editors drew was that the news website would carry less video, not more, but that television and online video would diverge. That was a recognition that broadcast and online are different media rather than two outlets for the same material — the point the newspaper editors’ confidence had skipped over.