Des Moines Register Adds a Bit of Virtual Reality to News Report
Newspaper Incorporates Technology of Oculus VR, Computerized Game Platforms to Tell Story
Last week, Gannett gave a preview of the virtual-reality news report. It includes familiar elements, such as a written article, photos and straightforward video. But it also takes a viewer into a computerized world of cows, soybeans and grain silos that gives the feeling you're roaming around a farm in Page County, Iowa.
After strapping on Oculus's virtual-reality headset, viewers can explore the farm grounds and interact with 3-D data graphics to learn more about the Dammann family and how demographic and economic changes have affected their lives. For example, viewers can walk up to the family's machine shop and click an icon that places them inside a 3-D video feature about maintaining high-tech farming equipment.
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Mr. DeBarros says Oculus can be the next big innovation for newsrooms. "It is equal parts a journalistic endeavor and R&D effort," he says.
Beyond using the Oculus technology to advance storytelling, he says, Gannett also could sell ads to run within the virtual environment. The company may apply the various technologies used to produce the farm report in other articles at the 81 newspapers it owns, he said.
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Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, says new digital elements can enhance reporting, but they can't replace the value of strong narrative storytelling.
"Although we call it multimedia, most of these stories are hybrids that use the visual elements to amplify the underlying narrative," he says. "You can take a virtual tour of a building where an event occurred but that is a different thing than having characters who are fully explained."
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