Virtual Journalism - Denied!

Bad news for fans of virtual journalism.

Remember this entry (slightly edited), from last month?

This week, I proposed a new summer course for our school's distance education summer program. The course would be an exploration of journalism in virtual reality.

Here's the basic premise: the news business doesn't know how to deal with gamers. Gamers are "lost eyeballs" - unreachable by old and new media (as currently practiced) while engaged in gamespace. The advertising biz doesn't see it quite that way. Embedded advertising can be found in games now and will likely appear in more games in the future.

Why not experiment with embedded news?

The course would spend a short time teaching the basics of the 3D immersive environment Second Life, followed by several weeks of beat reporting within SL.

As a bonus, we would experiment with a variety of publication forms: blog, notecard and 3D "build."

If the course is accepted by my department, school and university weekend program, it would appear in June, giving me a few months to prep.

Well, no joy. My proposal was not accepted. That said, I still have a plan for a fun and (I think) educational class in virtual-J, in case any school administrators out there are interested. ;-)

Oh, and I'm free this summer to teach it!