The ways that journalists report on news – and the way that their audiences consume it – is changing day to day.
Earlier this month The New York Times ran its first augmented reality (AR) feature story previewing the Winter Olympics, allowing readers to “meet” and watch Olympic athletes in 3D through their smartphones. As the article explained, “Through your phone, the room around you looks just as it is, except the athlete is in it with you.”
Graham Roberts, the director of immersive platforms storytelling for the Times, describes the technology: “Augmented reality allows us to bridge the digital and physical worlds; graphical elements can be superimposed on your immediate environment. The Olympics project … demonstrates one of AR’s richest benefits: deepening the explanatory value of visual journalis
m.”
The article about the Olympics “was not just about this single piece of journalism. It was also about exploring what visual journalism may look like in the near future. We are extending stories beyond the inches of a screen — and in so doing, envisioning a world in which devices begin to disappear and the spaces around us become the information surfaces themselves.”
Nonny de la Pena, a documentary filmmaker, notes in a Media Post article that AR “… creates a duality of presence. You know you’re ‘here,’ but you feel like you’re ‘there,’ too. The experience is much more visceral. It’s really a kind of a whole-body experience and is very unique — different than radio, than television, than any other kind of format for experiencing a story.” In de le Pena’s case, AR created a medium to deepen coverage and build empathy from her viewers.
Others (myself included) are skeptical. Digiday’s Sahil Patel, in a 2016 article, (“If they build it, who will come? An anatomy of the VR hype bubble”) writes, “No one denies that virtual reality is cool. Trying on a VR headset and being taken to a time and place that you couldn’t possibly go to in real life is a pretty compelling proposition. But just because something is cool doesn’t mean it will be popular. VR is in the midst of a hype bubble.”
Like Patel, I have mixed feelings about this emerging technology and its implications for journalism.
Full disclosure: Despite the fact that I’ve spent most of my career working with innovative tech companies, I’m hardly a first-adopter when it comes to shiny new personal technology. I clung stubbornly to my compact discs and fought hard against digital music for years (don’t worry, I’ve turned that corner, finally), and I still remain very much on Team Book versus Team Kindle.
And so this new immersive technology that brings news images not just into our televisions and mobile devices, but into our living rooms as actual 3D interactive visuals, makes me a little skeptical about its potential long-term. No doubt its cool factor is high – remember how excited we all were about Pokemon Go? But is AR a viable way to inform the public about important issues and breaking news? I’m hesitant to jump on that bandwagon just yet. It’s a long way off before AR-fueled journalism becomes adopted by the masses.
For one, the technology to create AR content is expensive. It will be interesting to see how advertising will emerge to support AR content. Will you have to sit through a 3D immersive commercial for Doritos, for example, before you can access your AR feature story? And will consumers mind this, or will they accept that commercials need to evolve just as editorial content has?
What about viewing AR content that could be violent or otherwise disturbing, like war footage, for example? Again, the Times describes the technology as creating “a new pathway that can lead away from the abstract depiction of objects and toward a more visceral sense of real-life scale and physicality.” Are consumers going to want to experience frightening or intense content in an immersive, realistic way, even if from the security of their iPhones? In all sincerity, news today is scary enough reading it in print and via Twitter– I’m not sure if I’m ready for it live and in-person.
Clearly we’re in the early days here, and I applaud the Times – newspapers’ Old Gray Lady – for pushing the norms for how stories are presented. The reality is that how people access the news is far different from when the Times published its first issue in 1851. Journalism will continue to evolve, and it will be an interesting ride for media and communications professionals to watch, whether via the traditional printed page, or as a 3D immersive visual journey.