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Just as print and broadcast news media are reinventing themselves to fully embrace the Internet and newer media, schools and departments of journalism and communication are revamping their courses to acknowledge the Web’s growing dominance, powers of interactivity, and the convergence of print, broadcast and online environments.

Students should be taught to function in this age of convergence. “Repurposing” news and information might be an achievable strategy for future economic survival, but these students should be taught the necessary journalistic imperatives that go along with such use of material. And the dumping of news reporting into a super-processing vat and piping it out through multiple channels of print, broadcast and the Web can be seen as an easy task, but doing this becomes more meaningful work when it is done with an eye toward keeping journalism’s basic principles in mind.

To accomplish this, various approaches can be tried:

• Universities can test the possibilities and limits of convergence and multimedia journalism in controlled classroom news laboratory settings. [See author's note.]
• Faculty can work closely with news organizations, which might be able to provide extra resources and equipment and monitoring.
• Internships can offer students a chance to participate in multimedia story-building in newsrooms.
• Journalism faculty doing applied research can measure what happens to their students in these classroom and professional settings through field visits and seminars.
• Universities must assess their faculty’s increased time pressures and the skills needed to teach effectively in this multimedia environment to prepare students for the realistic expectations of the workplace.