Our Team Meets with CNN Atlanta

Share!

Two weeks ago, Edward Thomas, the Product Manager of Mobile & Emerging Technology at CNN invited the JJIE Virtual Worlds Team to present the project at CNN.

At 11 a.m. today, seven members of the JJIE Virtual Worlds team, along with Publisher & Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable Journalism (CSJ), Professor Leonard Witt, CSJ Executive Editor John Fleming, Metaverse Strategist, Designer and Trainer Gwenette Writer-Sinclair, and JJIE web producer Christopher Hayden presented the result of a semester of hard work and dedication.

The primary goal of this presentation was to introduce our work to CNN producers, perhaps with the prospect of doing further collaborative experimentational work in the intersection of virtual reality and journalism.

Here is how we envision a partnership could work:

  • The Center for Sustainable Journalism would bring together college students, providing them with educational and experiential opportunities, as they work with virtual reality immersive journalism projects in collaboration with CNN.
  • In ongoing collaboration with the VW team, CNN product managers would provide the VW team with concepts based on CNN’s specific needs in the exploration of virtual reality storytelling techniques.
  • The VW team would design virtual world interactive scenarios and immersive journalism experiences, and then come back to the CNN team for critiques and collaborative improvements to reach project goals.
JJIE Interns Present to CNN atlanta
Seven JJIE Virtual Worlds student interns (left to right; Jackson Walsh, Kevin Enners, Camille Moore, Claire Bohrer, Cristina Guerra, Ariel Greenaway, Anastaciah Ondieki) at the CNN Center.

At the beginning of the JJIE Virtual Worlds project, Professor Leonard Witt said,

“If we do excellent work, we will get recognition.”

Based on the interest of CNN, one of the world’s largest news organizations, in considering a long-term relationship with the virtual worlds team, I believe it’s safe to say that the team did excellent work, which clearly paid off with recognition and possible future collaborations.

Next Steps

  • The Christopher Thomas story is still a work in progress. The long text story needs to be edited once more before presenting it to CSJ editor John Fleming for possible JJIE publication. Furthermore, the machinima story, which was the initial, sole end product of this project (wow, how that has changed), must be re-edited into a final draft before its public debut.
  • The machinima “Forgive” is also a work in progress. Students Jackson Walsh and Cristina Guerra will continue to collaborate with Gwenette to complete their creative translation of a teenage girl’s poem to an emotionally evocative machinima.
  • Student researcher Claire Bohrer will continue to conduct research around this project to determine the effect of virtual worlds journalism versus textual journalism on an audience.

As we wrap up our main Christopher Thomas Story and our Forgive machinima, we are eager to see how many more doors can be opened and partnerships created with this ever-expanding project.

Share!

Approaching the Finish Line

Share!

The smorgasbord of breakfast foods and the enthusiastic conversation at the fifteenth and final group meeting this morning at 8AM brought back memories of the very first group meeting 4 months ago. At the first group meeting, all the interns eagerly gathered together, meeting each other for the first time, openly discussing their initial thoughts and expectations of the project. However, at this final group meeting, the chatter was more of an exchange between close friends, expressing a mixture of emotions, from excitement to sadness about the end of the project.

GroupMeeting15_4e
Professor Leonard Witt discusses the Christopher long-text story with the group.
GroupMeeting15_11e
The entire group watches the first draft of the Christopher machinima for the first time.

Although today was the final official group meeting, the project is still not complete. While the journalists are still editing their individual segments and the full long-text story, the machinimists are working to perfect the first draft of the Christopher Thomas story, which was debuted at the meeting today. Furthermore, the campus-wide presentation of the immersive journalism project will be presented to all students and faculty at Kennesaw State University in January.

Since there is still much to be done for the completion of the project, a few of the interns’ contracts will be extended so that they can finish the project throughout December, January, and as long as it takes to complete the project.

Next week, all JJIE Virtual Worlds interns who are available will meet one more time for a final group meeting on Wednesday, December 9. Since next week is the university’s exam week, all interns will not be required to be at the meeting. However, for those who will be attending, they will prepare for a CNN presentation on December 11th. Along with this, student researcher, Claire Bohrer will be collecting information via survey and interviews for her research of the project’s process and progression, and to answer the overarching question: What can journalism professors, students and professionals learn from this nine-month experiment of using virtual world platforms to tell real-world journalism stories?

Since the entire group will not be meeting again until the January presentation, goodbyes and thank yous were exchanged, as we realized the rapidly approaching finish line of this long, tireless, enlightening journey, the reveal of its success in informing the public on very important issues in the Juvenile Justice System and more, the very real possibility of changing Christopher Thomas’s life, and of course, the dire need to document the producers of this project through a group photo.

GroupMeeting15_14e
The JJIE Virtual World Team at the final group meeting

 

Share!