The winds of change continue to blow through the media industry.

A major announcement was made yesterday by RTNDA. The current name — Radio and Television News Directors Association — will be changing on Oct. 13 — from RTNDA to RTDNA. The new name will be the Radio and Television Digital News Association.

The timing of the name change is in conjunction with the RTNDA convention.

The same news release (letter to RTNDA members) that announced the name change also announced a huge sea change. The RTNDA board is trying to establish a joint convention with the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) for 2011. The RTNDA statement says: “We’re reaching out, in this time of change, to make new partnerships where the walls of the old media used to keep us apart.”

Even at the college level, most communications programs have divided journalism from telecommunications, making those separate degrees, separate departments and sometimes separate colleges.

For what I think is the first time in my college, the SPJ chapter invited the local TV broadcast anchors to be the featured speakers at the SPJ meeting this semester.