The reporter sat down at his desk and placed his fingers on the worn, circular keys. It was the same typewriter he sat at night after night. The melodious clicking of each letter was his adrenaline. The black smell of fresh ink was a drug in his veins. The deadline rush addicted him to his job; it was the reason he woke up every morning. On the wall across from him was a flat, black clock. He didn't need to look at it; all he needed was to hear the slow and steady tick, tick, tick. He knew what it meant: Deadline was near. It didn't make him nervous; it excited him. And when the deadline passed, he could exhale. The rush was over, and finally he could relax. But that was back then.

Today, there is no relaxing. The way we get our news is changing and behind the scenes, that means the responsibilities reporters are increasing. No longer do they have the comfort of knowing they can breathe a little once deadline passes. In fact, the print edition of the newspaper is the last of their worries.

Take the same scenario and put it in today's context: When a reporter breaks the news, she doesn't come back to the newsroom to write her story. Although the same anticipation of deadline lingers, it's different than it's ever been in the past. Today's breaking-news reporter types her story on her laptop from the scene, e-mails it to her editor, takes out her digital camera, records some audio, takes photos — even some video, why not?

The deadline isn't 11 p.m. anymore. The deadline is now. She gets the content on the Web, she writes a longer, more elaborate story for print, and continues writing updates for the Web all day. After deadline passes, she's still not done; she writes a blog about her experience. One reporter is being stretched in different directions, acting as a print reporter, TV anchor, radio reporter and Web guru. Thus, the concept of news "convergence."

This isn't the kind of "convergence" that you would find in the dictionary; it's more complex than that. Ordinarily, "convergence" would be the act of meeting at a single point. But media "convergence" is so new that it isn't defined in the dictionary. Using the standard definition would imply that the different media — print, radio and television — would merge to create a single industry.

But this still leaves room for interpretation: Which aspects of these different mediums are joining and where? It's all about the content and the context of the converging factors — it's about two or more mediums joining in delivery on a Web site. The way I see it, the "convergence" of news is the publication of multimedia (including text, video, photos and interactive elements) produced for a Web site, either by a single network or joined networks — to enhance news content.

"Convergence" does not mean copying and pasting articles from the print version straight to the Web. Although this does require two separate mediums, the Web is being presented as a promotional tool for the newspaper. In this example, the Web site isn't used to enhance the content already present within the newspaper article; stories are just recycled.

Another common misconception is that "convergence" occurs when one media conglomerate buys over a smaller newspaper and radio station. This is incorrect. Although the two networks are merging, the content of each small network doesn't change; merely the ownership rights of the conglomerate are expanded.

"Convergence" occurs when the actual news staff — reporters, anchors, editors, photographers, and producers — merge into a single space to produce content together. A prime and current example of this is the News Center in Tampa Bay, Florida, where a $34 million building is the headquarters to the Tampa Tribune newspaper, the local NBC affiliate WFLA-TV, and the Tampa Bay Online Web site. Two mediums joined to present themselves together through a common space — the Web site.

In this example, a broadcast and print publication merge their time and resources to create double the content for the Web — and in multiple forms. "Convergence" can also occur when one reporter produces multimedia content for one story because "convergence" is about what's produced — not necessarily who is producing it. When the reporter from the opening example writes her article, produces video, takes photos, and writes a blog, she is enhancing her news content by offering multiple ways of telling the story. And when these mediums are all presented together on a single Web site, her story is truly converged.

Many traditional journalists fear the word "convergence." Like the reporter from our opening scenario, they have spent their entire careers becoming experts at traditional reporting. Now they're expected to either learn the new technology or lose their jobs. If they just learn what "convergence" truly means, perhaps it wouldn't be such an ominous word.

Sure, there is now a rush to produce more news in less time, but isn't this what journalists got into the industry for in the first place? To deliver the news as quickly as possible to the public? The Internet is just a way to improve upon a passion journalists already have. Put simply, to converge is to be able to tell a story in new ways. This is what journalists have always done. The only difference is that now they're using new tools.