why my future looks bleak.

Over the course of centuries, the term convergence has adopted multiple meanings. It's most recent definition refers to the way television and print journalists have to "converge" talents for the web. Northwestern professor Rich Holden, writing in 2002, predicts that these partnerships will expand with the advent of advanced Internet technology.

Holden discusses five different areas for convergence: ownership, tactics, structure, information gathering and storytelling. As of his writing, the most common type of convergence is through ownership or partnerships between papers and TV stations. Less common forms include storytelling and information gathering.

Holden predicts that "the progression from ownership and tactical convergence to information gathering and storytelling convergence will be slow." He's only half-right. Five years later, the media organizations' focus has shifted dramatically to storytelling convergence. Newspapers like the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post all have their own multimedia sites and produce content exclusively for them. Holden suggests that this method of convergence would be best facilitated by creating a multimedia team or by creating more "backpack journalists" not unlike vagabond reporter Kevin Sites. Increased storytelling convergence has had a profound impact on a journalist's job. We are encouraged to think more pictorially, and some reporters are responsible for full-scale multimedia productions.

But Holden is blatantly wrong about one thing-- he says, for "information gathering and storytelling convergence to become commonplace, many new kinds of jobs will need to be created, and many existing jobs will require new skills."

In actuality, jobs are decreasing. The US Department of Labor predicts that the journalism industry will experience "slower than average" growth until 2014, but papers still expect reporters with bachelors' degrees and ample newspaper experience. So, budding journalists cannot even hedge their bets by doing some other kind of internship in college to gain skill to enter a different market. Newspapers want skilled, experienced and committed students without bothering to commit back.

It would be nice if Holden was right, but he isn't. Convergence is not just about consolidating resources, it's about consolidating jobs.