Honoring a Godmother
Back in May of last year, I was honored to nominate my old friend Nonny de la Peña for the I-3 Award for Impact, Innovation and Influence, a special Mirror Award given by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Last week, this honor was repeated when Nonny received the Knight Foundation’s 2016 Innovation Award at a multi-panel event hosted by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
It was truly joyous for many of us to participate in this event, and for one big reason. This one person, who many once assumed was crazy and whose doctoral work her own college failed to support, changed our professional lives by introducing us and the world to an entirely new form of storytelling. And no offense to you white guys in media out there, but for once the pioneer we can publicly herald as our progenitor is not a white male, but a Latina and a mom.
I will never forget the moment at an ONA conference when I reconnected with Nonny, someone I already knew and respected from our days as recipients of the original Knight News Challenge grants. It was four years after our projects had launched. Hers had failed, and mine was on its last legs after I’d accepted a position as the Chair of Journalism Innovation at the S.I. Newhouse School.
But I wasn’t prepared for the apparent lunacy of what I was about to hear. With a passion and, let’s just say “fire,” that is typical of Nonny, she looked me square in the eyes and said something like this:
“You have to put on these virtual reality goggles and check out this project I’m working on. It’s so immersive, it’s incredible. You really feel like you’re there. This is such a powerful new tool for journalism. Please, you have to try it!”
“Goggles” — just the word alone sounded goofy. “Virtual reality” — it sounded too much like the failed Second Life or, before that, Nintendo VR. And “immersive” — what the hell was she talking about?
Perhaps only because she was Nonny I listened, but I’ll admit that I was worried she might be losing it. Meanwhile I was also giving her many excuses about how motion sick I sometimes get.
“No, Dan Pacheco,” she said, “You won’t get sick. Just put these on your face. Here.”
Fortunately for me, as for so many others in journalism, I paid attention to the advice of this modern-day Morpheus whom Engadget would later call the Godmother of VR. I took her red pill, and my life has never been the same since.
Even though I am extremely motion sensitive, to the extent that I still avoid most 3D movies, I suddenly found myself standing in line next to some janky-looking avatars that, while not very photorealistic, seemed to eerily move like real people thanks to the use of motion capture equipment. And I heard what sounded like the real audio from a woman who was panicking as the people in line were shuffling forward to get whatever food she had left.
Within seconds, I felt like I was standing in a food line in the middle of a prosperous American city, and I was both hungry and afraid for my safety as the crowd became more desperate. I think my stomach even grumbled.
That first piece of VR journalism was called “Hunger in Los Angeles.” I won’t give away the ending for those who haven’t experienced it, but everyone should know that this was the moment when virtual reality became something more than a catchphrase from a William Gibson novel.
Despite what many in Hollywood and the video game industry may tell you, this — and not the sale of Oculus to Facebook — was the inflection point where VR became more than just another form of entertainment. Nonny, a humble, caring Latina mother descended from undocumented Mexican immigrants, had shown the world an entirely new way not just to tell stories, but to transport the viewer’s consciousness into the experience of another human being.
Of course, as Nonny put it, “Journalism never gets enough credit for how it pushes technology forward.”
I was completely floored by that experience (almost literally — I remember sitting down after taking off the goggles), and it changed the way that I think about what we do in journalism. It even changed my career, and the careers of many others like me.
With help from Nonny, who graciously agreed to come out to Syracuse (where I teach), I went on to both learn and then teach these new storytelling skills to hundreds of students. And thanks to a smart bet played by then-VP Mitch Gelman, I kicked off an initiative at USA Today that became “Harvest of Change,” the first large-scale use of virtual reality by a commercial news organization.
Virtual reality, though still in its early days, has gone far in journalism since then. A year after we launched “Harvest of Change,” The New York Times invested heavily in 360 video by distributing 1 million Google Cardboard viewers to its subscribers along with a mobile app featuring its Daily 360 videos. Other media companies like the Discovery Channel followed suit, and Facebook and YouTube are now driving a large percentage of 360 viewing within their ecosystems, independent of viewing devices.
VR, or perhaps more accurately “immersion,” is now a legitimate new tool for information and engagement that’s being explored by media companies of every stripe. And unlike past technologies, it’s not an “if you build it, they will come” play as far as advertising goes. Branded content is also growing, with sold immersive experiences showing up right alongside content-driven pieces.
As I stated during my panel at the Knight Innovation Awards, my interest in this medium is in its ability to help people truly understand information and others’ experiences in a visceral way. But as someone who rode the wave from the early dot-com days when we thought we could build stuff now and monetize later (which in many cases never happened, leading to the dot bomb crash), I’m happy to see that media companies are monetizing VR right from the start.
Four years later, Nonny is fortunate to be surrounded by peers who are all doing interesting immersive journalism, and a number of them shared their insights at the event. It was really striking to see just how far things have come since the days when Nonny was borrowing duct-taped goggles and mo-cap equipment.
CUNY professor Bob Sacha, The New York Times’ Maureen Towey and I shared our insights on what’s different and unique about 360 video compared to traditional video.
“Good stories are space or place based,” as Maureen put it, but we also talked about the challenges of capturing environments and subjects when people can look anywhere.
One issue that first-time 360 journalists often overlook is how high to position the camera. I tell my students to think of the viewer’s head as being transported right into the camera. This means that you have to think empathetically about the “experiencer,” including that person’s average height. If you put the camera too low or too high, you can make someone feel like a Smurf or a giant.
Another issue is that you can never predict where people are going to look. Rather than framing a shot (which is impossible in 360), you really have to set up the scene so that the geometry, action or subjects around the camera naturally guide the experiencer’s attention. Maureen discussed how The Times is analyzing heatmap data from Facebook to get a sense of where viewers are looking, and where they’re not.
Our panel got together ahead of time and compiled some tips for first-time 360 videographers and news organizations. You can read them on this Google doc: bit.ly/up2speedvr.
Another panel focused on empathy. Laurie Goodstein, a national religion correspondent for The New York Times, talked about the importance of empathy in telling the story of an evangelical couple who lost their business after refusing to plan a same-sex wedding. And StoryUP’s Sarah Hill talked about her company’s research into how different immersive storytelling inputs affect brain wave patterns, causing viewers to “feel” the story. You can watch the entire panel discussion on the CUNY Facebook page.
“Frontline” EP Raney Aronson-Rath interviewed Darren Emerson of VR City and Amaury La Burthe of Novelab about their work. Darren discussed the making of “Witness 360: 7/7,” about a woman who survived a train bombing in London. “It started out as an exercise in research,” he said. “The interviews were done first, and we constructed the narrative from that.” Darren’s project was about recreating the experience of someone who goes blind. “You’re left with her voice more than anything,” he said.
And finally, when interviewed by MoMA Senior Curator Paola Antonelli, Nonny shared some information on what’s coming next: full “volumetric videos” or holograms of real people that you can walk around in VR as if they’re actually standing right in front of you.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Knight Innovation Awards is that the recipient gets to give a $25,000 gift to someone else. Nonny chose John Carlos Frey, an investigative reporter at the Investigative Fund and a national correspondent for “PBS NewsHour.”
Among all the wisdom shared by people at these awards, there’s one quote that just summed it all up for me. And of course it came from Nonny. After Knight Journalism VP Jennifer Preston introduced her, Nonny said:
“Years ago the Knight Foundation funded me, and unfortunately that initiative failed. It was a failed startup. So I am so, so grateful that they chose to invest in me again. Thank you.”
I think this is the most important lesson to be gained from Nonny’s story, and the genius behind her method. Innovators do not earn their stripes by sitting around a table and dreaming up just one idea that becomes an instant hit and creates pots of gold. Instead, they constantly delve into a whole lot of meaningful things, driven by their passion and curiosity.
Many of these attempts fail, sometimes miserably, occasionally to the point that pushes the creator to financial ruin. But those who emerge are the ones who didn’t give up. They carefully study what worked and what didn’t. They “keep on keepin’ on.” And every so often they stumble across something that changes the world.
Whether you are an innovator yourself or someone who claims to support innovation — if you have read this far, take note. Passionate and tireless creativity is the way to greatness, and it needs to be supported and acknowledged. This event was all about that.
Nonny, I am so happy that you stuck with your instincts so that more journalists and videographers can be inspired by your example — and we can finally exclaim in unison with the rest of the world (even those who doubted you): Thank you!
Dan Pacheco is the Chair of Journalism Innovation at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. He teaches Virtual Reality Storytelling, Emerging Media Platforms and Interactive Data Visualization.
