Picture it. The clock just hit 7 a.m. After already smacking your snooze button three times, you realize the inevitable can't be avoided any longer. It's time to wake up. You crawl out from the covers of your bed and stumble toward the kitchen where the automatic timer on the coffee maker has already clicked into overdrive. You pour yourself a cup.

Until now, it's no different than any typical morning. But here's where things get thrown off track. Rather than heading to the front porch to snag the morning paper, you reach toward the counter next to the coffee pot and pick up a large tablet, which looks somewhat like an oversized Palm Pilot. You tuck the device under your arm and head for the bathroom. With a tiny pen-like device, you poke the tablet. The screen lights up. Your morning paper has arrived: Yankees 11, Devil Rays 2.

So maybe we're not there yet. Maybe we haven't struck the day in age when news printed on paper is nothing but another glimpse into an ancient lifestyle. But we're close. The world's ways are changing. And journalism's role in society must change as well.

That's where converged journalism comes into play. We now have the capability to instantly relay news to society with the click of a button. Rather than waiting for the next day's paper to find out who won this afternoon's football game, we can capture the score with the click of a mouse or the punch of a button. Televisions, 24-hour news services, and internet-integrated cell phones have allowed today's journalist to file the latest scoop as fast as they can type.

Specifically, the jobs of sports journalists have become more difficult. Rather than simply writing a story by the evening deadline, writers are being called upon to deliver the news as soon as they hear it. Rather than delivering the story, writers must analyze. They must trace every aspect. They must now compete against streaming video and up-to-date photos.

So get ready. The future has arrived. To find out more about the future of journalism, specifically sports writing, browse through this site. You may be surprised just how far we've come.

Because these days, the deadline never ends. And news never waits.