CUNY is one of the 2017 winners of the Journalism 360 Challenge. See all the winners.
Project Description
Recently CUNY J-School’s Center for Community and Ethnic Media (CCEM) offered a training on 360° video for community and ethnic media journalists. A good number of journalists, young and old, from a wide variety of ethnic media publications in the New York area attended.
They watched some VR stories in cardboard headsets, talked about how 360° storytelling was different and created test 360° shots using a Theta S camera. They displayed tremendous enthusiasm and interest. At the end, each journalist pitched a specific idea about a 360° story they could publish in their community publications. There was a lot of energy in the room and later, the written feedback was very positive.
And that was the end of it.
The Community & Ethnic Media Journalism 360° Video pilot project is our scalable idea to work with these outlets to take the next step with immersive journalism:
- We want to attract media outlets to use 360 video by captured actual stories of specific events that happen in their communities, a “show, don’t tell” model. Working with CCEM, we’d choose a small group of publications and their journalists that were at the initial trainings and pair them with CUNY-J school students to create VR stories that will be published on the community website or Facebook page. The students get a clip, the organization shows this new form of storytelling and other organizations see how it looks and the engagement. It’s proof of concept.
- Buy several simple VR cameras and loan them at a low or no cost to journalists who have attended a training.
- Create a “how to” online guide based on these published stories so that other media organizations can replicate them in their community. For example, how to do a 360° video of a festival.
Read more: Can community news organizations produce 360 video stories for less than $500?