Tampa resembles the converged newsroom in Lawrence, Kan., in just one respect: both run simultaneous print, Web and TV operations. The rest is a matter of scale.

Media General, which owns the Tampa operation, built its all-in-one News Center in 2000. It is a three-floor complex with an atrium in the middle of the second and third floors. The TV assignment desk, the hub of activity and noise, is located in the middle of the second floor under the atrium. The Tampa Tribune newsroom is on the third floor, ringing the TV pod from above with a railing.

Metro Team Leader Howard Altman, who manages the cops and courts reporters (the team primarily responsible for online content), likes to joke that he's practicing convergence by hanging over his third-floor railing and shouting to the TV folks below, "Anything going on?"

But as practiced in Tampa, convergence is a little more strategic than that. Yet, while stories are reported and edited for three distinct platforms in what is arguably one of the country's most competitive media markets, Tampa is surprisingly behind the curve in some respects.

Just because they get a lot of industry attention doesn't mean there's universal buy-in. As is typical, there are hold-outs in the reporting and editing ranks who don't like sharing scoops with their TV colleagues or the Web. And Tampa is still not operating a continuous news desk, something I would have expected by now (I'm told a plan is coming soon) given the competition between The Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times.

Even without a 24-hour reporting system, The Tampa operation is impressive. The paper covers three counties, TV Channel 8 covers 13 and is the biggest station in all of Florida. Many of the paper's reporters work with video and audio, and most all share their sources and tips with TV. The paper's Business department produces and presents TV content on the air five-days-a-week.

The paper's Sports editor is very likely the only Sports editor in the country to head up a converged operation, meaning he manages content and reporters for all three platforms because Sports lends itself to the TV-multimedia culture. (For other departments in the newsroom, there are corresponding print, Web and TV managers)

A multimedia coordinator, Kenneth Knight, keeps track of it all from his seat on the TV assignment desk under the atrium.

Thanks to a Media General internship program designed for multimedia, the paper was able to train and hire a reporter who has become a special projects whiz.

Reporter Julie Pace teams up with a photographer to work on multimedia breaking news or enterprise stories three days a week with a plan to expand to five.

This is how she managed a typical story recently on how the rising cost of living hurts senior citizens:

For the newspaper she reported and wrote a trend piece examining the larger issues, focusing on a company that hires senior workers.

For TV, she reported and wrote a 2-3 minute piece (the photographer shot the video) focused on one man who works at a local stadium for spending money.

For the Web site, she wrote a synthesized story and added links back to the TV report and the story in the paper. In addition, she added results from a newspaper poll, an audio recording from yet another interview, and links to community services. The photographer added a slide show of photos that didn't make it into the paper.

Pace and the photographer started the project at 5 p.m. on a Monday. By 1 p.m. the next day, everything I just listed was online and the TV package made the 5:30 p.m. newscast. The newspaper package was in the Wednesday morning paper.

Pace, who is 24, may well be the spokesman for her generation, and certainly the best promoter of 'multimedia as the savior of newspapers' I've heard yet:

Her words:

"People underestimate young people. They really do read newspapers. We need to think of the Web as a supplement. If you just repurpose (print content onto the Web), you're handing people a reason not to buy your paper."

As a broadcast major at Northwestern, Pace read many newspapers - most of them online. But she thought of herself as a "newspaper reader."

"If you see a story unfold online, then as a reader you know that paper is working the story and you'll pick up that paper to read more the next day. If breaking news is not on the Web, how do readers know you're working it?"

If reporters and editors take control of the Web, it'll have depth and ethics, says Pace.

What does she see for the future of newspapers? Eventually Web sites like TBO.com will become the primary platforms for delivering news and papers will contain stories with second-day leads, context and analysis. We'll no longer think of the newspaper as the place to 'break news,' she predicts.

Even as Tampa leads us into the future, some reporters and editors cling to old notions and fears.

Executive Editor Janet Weaver builds at least an hour into every day to walk the floor and talk to people.

"We’re not dying, but we'll have to change in ways that make us uncomfortable and that feels like we're dying," she says.

She hears a lot of variations of, 'I didn't sign on to do a package for TV. I didn't sign on to have it be about data instead of stories. Where's the romance in that?'

Weaver talks about a line from an Eagles song that goes something like, 'sometimes the brightest light is from the burning bridge.'

But you've got to get everything you want to save across the bridge first. "We talk about serving the readers, but most of us got into the business because we love the craft," she says. "Some of the things we love aren't going to make it over the bridge, but our values will."