PM Network - March 2015

Another initiative, Project Syria, uses audio, video and photos taken during the Syrian civil war, along with virtual-reality headsets, to create an immersive look at the wartime experiences of children. Funded by the World Economic Forum, the 2014 project was spearheaded by Nonny de la Peña, a graduate fellow at the University of Southern California and a pioneer in immersive journalism.

“Advances in immersive three-dimensional experiences will make traditional, static two-dimensional photos and videos look as old-fashioned to us as the very first black-and-white photos seem to us today,” Dan Pacheco, a journalism professor at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA and a consultant on the Gannett project, told the Syracuse Media Group.

On the Farm

Virtual reality may represent the future of journalism, but only if pilot projects like Gannett’s prove successful. For Gannett and its project partners, success meant creating a self-guided 3-D walking tour that would be viewed with Oculus Rift, a virtual-reality headset that responds to users’ movements, as well as a simpler 2-D version that would live online. Yet success also meant more than a flashy presentation.

“We wanted strong storytelling behind it,” says
Amalie Nash, executive editor and vice president
for news and engagement, The Des Moines Register,
Des Moines, Iowa, USA. “In a lot of ways, we tack-
led it the same as any journalism project: There
was a lot of reporting, interviewing, data gathering
and photography.”
In addition to those typical project components,
however, Ms. Nash’s team—reporters, editors and
photographers—had to work closely with stake-
holders outside its own newsroom: the develop-
ers at Gannett’s Virginia-based digital division as
well as Total Cinema 360, the New York-based
film company that recorded both video and audio
in 360 degrees. Team members at both Gannett
offices had twice-weekly phone meetings to main-
tain consistent communications and to coordinate
the project elements on every platform: virtual,
online and print.

“There was a lot of back and forth between our
team and the team at Gannett Digital,” Ms. Nash says.
“That was the most important thing to pull this off.”
The virtual reality technique also brought unique
challenges. One concern was some users who
experienced nausea from the use of the headset.
Another project challenge, Ms. Nash explains,
involved the sheer amount and intricacy of the
photographs her team needed to take so that the
digital team could build the virtual environment.
“Our photographer had to take these extreme
detail shots,” she says. “What exactly does that
not taking a million pictures
of cracks in the sidewalk.”
After the Des Moines team
completed its initial fact-
finding, reporting and photo-
graphing, it sent its data and
photos to the digital team to
create a prototype. Then, in
July, all of the team members,
from both Iowa and Virginia,
visited the farm. They needed
to test the prototype, and to
do that, they needed input
from key stakeholders: the
family that owned the farm.