The Learning Curve: Findings From Recent Experiments in News Organizations
During September 2015, representatives of 10 news organizations replied to a questionnaire asking about their virtual reality experiences: what they have done, what they have learned and what they need to explore further. The respondents were from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA TODAY NETWORK, Fusion, RYOT, Vrse, BBC, Discovery, “Frontline” and Emblematic Group. Still, little to no rigorous audience testing has been conducted, immersive experiences are still nascent and the discussion points below are largely anecdotal and based on early impressions.
More Engaging
Early tests of experiences have yielded deeper, more immersive stories that people enjoy and stay with longer than a traditional video or article. Feedback is characterized by more visceral and emotional reactions. People say that virtual reality brings them closer to the events and breaks down barriers inherently raised by a reporter or correspondent. Content creators are still experimenting with pacing and length of the stories.
“Everybody uses the ‘empathy’ word, and it’s true. When I did ‘Hunger in Los Angeles,’ people were trying to hold the [diabetic’s] head, and came out bawling. People commented on the intensity of their emotional connection and feeling.”
Nonny de la Peña, Emblematic Group
“Anecdotally, people are amazed by the VR experiences we have produced, whether it is landing on a farm in a helicopter or walking the streets of Old Havana. But in terms of more empirical metrics, we have learned that the current metrics used for video are not applicable — and that a new range of reporting will be needed.”
Niko Chauls, director of applied technology, USA TODAY NETWORK
Cumbersome Production
The production time and cost, including cumbersome postproduction and the stitching process, can be laborious, time consuming and costly. For virtual reality to be more prevalent, tools that reduce this burden will need to be created and become readily available. It is also difficult today to preview shots, which reduces the certainty that the 360-degree video will accurately capture the shooter’s intent.
“The technology is not yet production-ready, and postproduction is too slow, but we can start to understand where this approach will offer value.
It is very early days for this type of technology.”Cyrus Saihan, head of business development, BBC Future Media
Limited Accessibility
Accessibility to virtual reality viewers is still very limited. Some organizations have used community events in shopping malls or town halls to bring people together to see the stories and try out the new gear. Greater effort to build a VR ecosystem have been made by news organizations and marketing agencies for major brands by giving away cardboard viewers to encourage people to download mobile apps and look at the VR storytelling at home.
“We think people will continue to consume journalism in the fastest, most efficient, most accessible (which often means cheapest) way possible. Until there is live VR reporting from the front lines that can be accessed easily on a device while on the go, VR has a long way to go to replace what is there.”
Corey Key, vice president of digital, corporate marketing and research, Discovery Communications
Ethics Considerations
Journalists are thinking about the unintended consequences of providing 360-degree coverage. What happens when a whole scene is depicted and there is no way to exclude potentially graphic aspects? How does one protect privacy or get consent in a spectrum that makes it difficult to isolate coverage? Can the immersion, at times, be too realistic or manipulative and create frightening, uncomfortable or misleading experiences? What kinds of warnings need to be given to potentially sensitive users? What happens when a war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder experiences a 360-degree video of a car bomb exploding in Aleppo?
“The projects we’ve taken on that deal with real people, places or events are definitely sensitive. Even though we are storytellers and we’re crafting VR experiences, we hold ourselves to a self-imposed standard to hold sacred the truth of the moment.”
Dan Coplon, Vrse
Providing a Narrative Structure
Journalists note that they are still learning how to preserve a narrative thread in virtual reality storytelling. VR can allow users to explore scenes and discover characters and information at their own pace, similar to how one navigates through a video game, which can provide a challenge to journalistic storytellers more familiar with taking the audience along a single narrative ride.
“I think there is a generation gap between the gamer and the non-gamer. It’s really hard for the decision-makers in the journalism field to come to terms with that. But the gamer generation is growing up, and they want to be informed global citizens.”
Nonny de la Peña, Emblematic Group
Bad Content
As displays get smaller and more comfortable, bad content remains among hardware manufacturers’ greatest fears. They are concerned that bad content will skew first impressions and turn people off, slowing or eroding the pace of adoption.
“It’s one thing to impress people with a demo. It’s another to keep them coming back. And you have to have compelling content to do that.”
Palmer Luckey, co-founder, Oculus, in Fast Company
Part of the Future of News
There is a consensus among editors and producers that virtual reality storytelling will add to the range of media used to report and distribute news. They believe that it will complement existing media types similar to how television augmented but has not replaced radio.
“I see it being part of journalism, the same way video is, and photography, text and interactives. Not every story is worth or requires being told in VR — so it is a question of choosing wisely.”
Mariana Santos, director of interactive and animation, Fusion
“This is the type of irresponsible, crazy exercise that we as a company should do more of.”
New York Times President and CEO Mark Thompson when showing off the Times’ first virtual reality experiences.
Technology Planning
Because the technology is changing and improving rapidly, it is very difficult to plan around what equipment to purchase over the next three months, let alone the next few years. Innovative journalists, who did not have lavish budgets in even the best times, are having to find creative ways to purchase hardware and software knowing that it will be out of date in as little as a year. Some are renting out their equipment even as they use it as a way to justify the inevitable churn.
“As the technology moves forward, the process will become more and more nimble.”
Raney Aronson-Roth, executive producer, “Frontline”
Monetization
Few virtual reality news experiences have attracted advertising. For the most part, the current reach does not provide the scale that brands and agencies are looking for, and existing metrics for reporting are in early stages. That said, testing ways to include brand messaging in virtual reality content are ongoing. While digital ad experts do not expect VR to include banners and boxes, they believe more creative and custom integrations are likely. These could include immersive pre-role, native VR and advertorial features, product placement, and deep linking to contextual marketing and brand experiences elsewhere in the ecosystem.
“Monetization is part of the conversation, but as a company and industry we’re still at the very early stages of exploring what that might be, how it would be best produced and how it should be presented.”
Jessica Yu, deputy managing editor and global head of visuals, The Wall Street Journal
“We need to monetize VR well enough just to cover the high production costs. No newsroom has the resources to simply add all the slots and equipment needed to start a VR team. Unless we achieve mass scale quickly, which seems unlikely, monetization as a ‘revenue stream’ will be years away.”
Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, managing editor of digital, The Washington Post
The Empathy Opportunity
When The New York Times started to produce its own virtual reality stories, Silverstein says the newspaper ran into questions around how to tell the story. These challenges are consistent with what other news organizations have attempted to figure out as well.
“One of the bigger surprises for us was how challenging it can be to craft a narrative when you don’t have any of the typical editing moves. There’s no framing the shot. You can’t zoom in or out. So we spent a lot of time in the editing suite trying to get it right. But you can imagine a scenario where VR is simply part of our reporting when breaking news occurs,” Silverstein told Consumer Reports.
Traditional news organizations, which have often been late to jump on an emerging technology, have been experimenting with virtual reality since the fall of 2014, when The Des Moines Register took people to a farm in the heartland to tell a story of the impact a changing America was having on the lives of a six-generation farm family.
Although it is not a meaningful part of the news diet today, experiential storytelling may be able to advance traditional journalistic practices. For example, one can hear an editor’s voice barking at a cub reporter — “Show, don’t tell!” “Details, details, details!” “Bring your reader into the story!” — and understand how spherical video and VR can enhance each of those staples in journalistic storytelling.
In “Virtual Reality Journalism,” a research project by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, the report’s authors provided a case study of the “Frontline” VR project on Ebola. In the report, they noted that users are engaging VR to play video games and have expressed interest in sitting courtside at basketball games, “but what about watching the news or a documentary?”
In answering the question, the authors wrote: “Virtual reality journalism . . . offers a new window through which to study the relationship between consumers of media and the representation of subjects. Whereas newspapers, radio, television and social media each brought us closer to being immersed in the experience of others, virtual reality has the potential to go even farther.” And they went on to raise questions of their own: Can VR journalism create what some have called a “co-presence” and, if so, can that “feeling that a user is there . . . engender far greater empathy for the subject than in other media representations?”
The report recognizes that new cameras “open up a tremendous opportunity for journalists to immerse audiences within their reporting” and places VR journalism in “a continuum of visual mediums that have long influenced journalism.”
Critics have challenged the use of 360-degree storytelling for showing an entire scene without a director’s selection of what to focus on to make a point or deliver a cogent narrative. That said, others have suggested that by making the user a “witness” to the scene, this immersive storytelling can remove bias and expose audience members to a variety of facts that allow them to reach their own conclusions. The Tow Center report points out the single frame dilemma Susan Sontag addressed in her book, “Regarding the Pain of Others,” which “noted that there is always someone behind the camera deciding what to keep in its frame and what to exclude.”
There is a long history of writers and producers aiming “to place the journalism audience in the story,” according to the Tow Center report. If this new approach comes closer to achieving that than even evocative, detailed writing or cameras embedded with subjects, the report’s authors wonder if, perhaps, “barriers between self and the other begin to erode [and] virtual reality offers the promise of further breaking the ‘fourth wall’ of journalism, wherein those represented become individuals possessing agency.”
