When I think of Florida, my mind wanders to scenes of orange groves, Spring Break partying at beaches, sprawling retirement communities, a space shuttle rocketing skyward, hung elections and the art deco of Miami Beach. But a converged newsroom?

It's becoming a mainstay from Orlando to Tampa to the "Space Coast" to Jacksonville, all locations were some degree of cooperation exists between print, broadcast and online media.

The American Press Institute's handy Convergence Tracker confirms the trend, with eight listings of converged operations in Florida -- nearly double the number in any other state (Texas has five). So it made sense that I would be heading to the University of Florida at Gainesville to speak at the third annual Symposium on Converged Journalism last week. The question on my mind was: Why Florida? Do journalists there grow multi-platform heads?

Anthony Moor, the editor at OrlandoSentinel.com, summed up the answer: No unions. He gave me a brief history of how the power of unions slowed down convergence efforts at his former workplace, KRON-TV in San Francisco, as well as in Rochester, N.Y., where he worked at the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper site, DemocratandChronicle.com.

"When I was on the union side in San Francisco, our union clout slowed convergence," Moor said. "In Rochester, I was on the management side, and we learned about reasonable union concerns but also saw unreasonable fear. That, too, slowed things down. In Orlando, we don't have unions, but we still have to be careful about what we ask our staff to do, because if they don't buy in to change, it won't happen, and that's not union-specific. It's just that we don't need to do a formal union-dance at the negotiating table for every change we undertake."

Linda Foley, the president of the Newspaper Guild, says that the Guild has no problem with the concept of convergence, except when it impinges on the rights of individual workers who might have to do more work for the same pay. She told me in a telephone interview that in converged operations such as Tampa's, print reporters must make a huge adjustment to meet 24/7 deadlines and to constantly rewrite stories.

"It puts an incredible amount of stress on the reporters themselves, because they're expected to serve many masters," Foley told me. "It's very difficult to produce news and do stories for various media. When they say there are no unions, then that makes it easier -- I'm sure it makes it easier to get rid of whoever you want to get rid of, and keep the people you want to keep." She said unions help protect workers from layoffs due to convergence or that euphemism "efficiency."

A panel at the University of Florida symposium was titled "How Broadcast, Online and Print Journalists Work Together." All the panelists were either existing or former Florida journalists. I prodded them to explain why that state was so gung-ho on convergence and why it has so many darned newspapers. John Burr, assistant managing editor at the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, said retirees made a difference.

"You have a lot of people from around the country retiring here, and older people read newspapers," Burr said. "The people coming to Florida have money. That's why newspaper chains have coveted this state and put money and effort into doing it well. That goes back 40 years. Why are we so convergent? The newspaper chains have built up their best newspapers in Florida, they're full of pretty creative people who really want to do this and they're pretty competitive. So once one does it, the other one wants to do it right away. It's a virtuous cycle in Florida."

Defining, fighting for convergence

After spending a day with "convergence" buzzing around my mind, I lost sight of just what it was. I guess you could define convergence as TV reports filed by newspaper reporters, or weather maps in newspapers that are co-branded by local TV affiliates, or combined Web operations by a newspaper and TV or radio station in one market.

But how much convergence is enough to qualify as a "converged newsroom"? Must the separate entities share reporters, on-air talent, story budgets, financial budgets? Symposium organizer Mindy McAdams, a professor and Knight Chair at the University of Florida, was the ideal person to define convergence in a simple way.

"The people should work together often and willingly," she said via e-mail. "The people -- meaning print and broadcast reporters, photographers, editors and producers -- should not say 'MY station, YOUR newspaper'; they should say 'OUR news operation, our TV news, our paper, our Web site.' They should say 'our' not because the corporation tells them to but because they believe it -- or better, they KNOW it. They should try to get every story out on all their platforms, as appropriate, and always do a good job of telling the story."

Despite all the converged news operations in Florida, McAdams couldn't name one "great example" of convergence working there -- yet.

The problem could be one of mindset. TV people might think newspaper people aren't fit for going on-air, and their print reports obviously need to be doctored for broadcast. Newspaper people might think that TV people are simply blow-dried actors reading lines. And the Web people are viewed by everyone else as just nerds in the back room.

When Anthony Moor was at KRON-TV, the TV folks were worried about the encroachment of print and Web into their realm. "We asked our superiors: Why are you putting these amateurs on the air?" he said. "Do you really think we're going to let you do that and pay them a lot less money? We were concerned about the credibility and quality of the work. The union provides you with a strong capability, a strong force to voice those concerns."

Now that Moor is a convergence evangelist at the Orlando Sentinel, he's finding that each medium's culture makes it difficult to create an atmosphere of true teamwork and sharing. "The toughest hurdle is culture," Moor told me via e-mail. "True convergence, where content sharing is standard practice, requires a subtle understanding of the needs and methods of each medium. So I spend a lot of time seeking to bridge the gap through education and outreach. I say I'm a Web editor, but I'm really a change manager."

Andrew Nachison, Media Center director for the American Press Institute, says that cross-ownership might help news outlets converge -- especially when it occurs in one market.

"What's most critical to understand is that only one of the [Florida] examples, Tampa, is owned and operated by the same company, Media General," he told me via e-mail. "This is the model likely to be replicated once FCC rules change to allow it in other markets. The key to understand is that convergence will happen with or without those FCC changes. Print, broadcast and online media will find ways to partner, share resources and extend their reach, because audiences are dispersed across multiple media. The strategy is motivated by the audience, rather than the device."

Quality and diversity issues

From the online journalism perspective, convergence can bring a trove of quality repurposed content from the newspaper and TV station, whether it's investigative print stories or a live video feed of a traffic jam. But convergence also is a doppelganger for downsizing, restructuring and making less people do more work. Many convergence projects might save corporate owners money in the short term, but they may also bring down the quality of journalism and the diversity of voices.

The Times-Union's Burr told the panel at the University of Florida that the jury was still out on print quality improving in a converged newsroom. "I have concerns that when we asked people, and continue to ask people, to perform on more and more platforms -- what's going to give?" he said. "Is the quality of the print product going to go down? Very likely it will. Will anybody notice? I don't know. ... It's certainly going to make Web journalism better. I certainly think it's going to make broadcast journalists better as they work with print journalists. I don't know about print."

Retha Hill, vice president of content development at BET.com, told the panel that she was concerned that convergence would decrease the number of divergent voices in the community -- especially on specialty beats. When local TV stations bring theater, movie or restaurant critics from print on the air, they are taking away the voice of a broadcast-only reviewer who might have given a differing opinion.

"When you have a television station kind of giving that up and turning it over to a newspaper to provide those reports, you're going to decrease opinion in the community," Hill said. "I'm really concerned that when you have newspapers doing [reviews for] television, all of a sudden you just have this one viewpoint. If you have a reviewer that never got hip-hop...or just doesn't get 'Malcolm X' as a movie, you're going to get that same old viewpoint on TV."

[Note: You can watch an archived Webcast of all four panels from the convergence symposium here.]