Immersive journalism: How photogrammetry, VR and AR are adding new dimensions to storytelling

How do you experience a story? Imagine you can put yourself in the story, put yourself in a virtual room and experience the story for yourself. You can immerse yourself into a picture, where you can look around, without need for explanation. Immersive journalism lets the reader act upon their curiosity. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have been growing in popularity among the journalism community for many years, but they are now in rivalry with photogrammetry.

Four technologists and web journalists join UT Knight Center in the 22nd International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) to discuss the changing ways in which web users experience storytelling. This panel will provide insights to the processes of creating these virtual worlds and how technology is changing the way we consume journalism.

The panel will be on the third day of ISOJ Online, Wednesday, April 28, at 4 p.m. U.S. Central Daylight Time (-5:00 UTC). Use this or any other time zone converter to find out the equivalent time in your region. But first, visit ISOJ’s website for more details and register here for ISOJ.

Professor of Professional Practice, aka web journalism professor Robert Hernandez of University of Southern California, leads the panel discussion. He is an award winning “journalist of the web”, as well as an experienced director and educator in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Wearables and media experiences through his branded platform: JOVRNALISM. Hernandez shares his skill and experience with a number of national boards, including; Chicas Poderosas, InquireFirst, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and Online News Association. He is the founder and moderator of the long standing twitter conversation #WJChat. Hernandez is a keynote speaker, consultant, educator, and advocate of web journalism solutions. 

Hernandez leads the following three panelists in conversation:

• Ben Kreimer is an independent journalism technologist specialising in drones, virtual reality, 360° video, spatial audio, 3D reconstructions, and open source sensor platforms. His work boosts storytellers projects with innovative technologies. He was the first technologist to introduce the 360° video to BuzzFeed as the Beta Flow in their media development research space Open Lab. He is a producer, advisor and lecturer, and has shared his knowledge at Poynter Institute for Media Studies, Yale, Stanford, NYU, UC Berkeley and more.
• Mint Boonyapanochoti is a member of the New York Times Research and Development team as a creative technologist and 3D designer. She specializes in immersive visualizations, integrative emerging technologies, and has a background in architecture and design. Her work challenges the way readers interact with journalism and explores new boundaries of technology with interactive experience.
• Elite Truong joins the panel as the director of strategic initiatives at The Washington Post. She runs The Washington Post’s experimental storytelling team, Lede Lab, which focuses on storytelling and reporting through emerging technologies, including 5G and spatial computing. Truong serves as the newsroom’s liaison to advertising and has worked on defining the future of journalism through partnerships in each role in her career. Formerly, she was a product leader in charge of launching numerous editorial networks on new platforms including Apple News, Facebook Instant Articles, AMP and AMP stories. She is a member of the inaugural 2015 ONA-Poynter Leadership Academy for Women in Digital Media, and member of the Online News Association and Asian-American Journalists’ Association.
• Thomas Flynn is the cultural heritage lead at Sketchfab. He works with 3D scanning and photogrammetry to help museums and cultural organizations publish 3D imagery. He is the co-founder of a company called Museum in a Box, which is trying to help museums share more of their content in new ways with more people around the world by using clever tech like 3D printing, contactless interaction and wireless communication.
• Retha Hill is on the faculty of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass  Communication at Arizona State University where she is the executive director of the New  Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab. Hill is an award-winning journalist, and the founder of AncestoriesXR, an extended reality platform  that helps families tell their unique genealogy history using video game technology and immersive media

Explore this topic through UT Knight Center’s 22nd International Symposium of Online Journalism for this panel discussion, Wednesday, April 28, 2021. Register now: https://isoj2021.splashthat.com/w