At what point does the trend toward media convergence become silly? Despite genuine concerns raised about the creating a homogenous media voice, the industry is caught in a "me-too" mindset.

One after another, companies are merging or entering alliances to ostensibly protect their market share. The latest to join the party are The Toronto Star and the CBC.

Like all buzzword inspired ideas, this one too, sounds good…in theory. This deal represents the kind of content alliance some pundits see strengthening the online side of the business. The Star-CBC partnership could allow the two institutions to support each other as opposed to simply repurposing content across multiple media, à la The Globe and Mail-CTV-Sympatico and National Post-CanWest Global.

But getting notoriously independent, and competitive journalists to actually work together is a whole other story. After all, it wasn't that long ago when newspapers didn't want to be scooped…by their own Web sites.