For four years, publishers have granted NML access to their convergent newsrooms to witness some of the most profound changes to traditional media since the arrival of desk top publishing. This year’s newsroom experiential was extra special. NML helped the Daily Dispatch design and produce content for a multimedia microsite that challenged students’ skills and their sensibilities about life.

You’d have to be insane to invest in interactive storytelling in South Africa. Web staff and new digital journalists need special skills; multimedia storytelling is time consuming and expensive; and – in an environment where online ad revenue and local connectivity is relatively low – returns (financial or users) are hardly guaranteed.

But the Daily Dispatch of East London is crazy. Like a fox – crazy.

Squeezed into some 60 pages is a review of how digitisation is impacting on media in Southern Africa, and especially how the new digi-scape is impacting on state-owned broadcasters. It's been produced for distribution at the 13th Highway Africa conference to a mass of influential people in journalism and journalism education.

Larry Strelitz recently spoke to Reg Rumney, Head of the Centre for Economics Journalism in Africa at Rhodes University, about current trends in media convergence. They explored what is meant by the term ‘convergence’ as well as the underlying cultural, technological and economic drivers of the process. Rumney provided examples of the process in practice and also raised concerns that the need to train future journalists in the varied technologies of production may be diverting attention away from the importance of actual content.