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'Syracuse University Professor Dan Pacheco, who worked as a consultant on the Gannett farm presentation, eventually sees a variety of other uses. He says virtual reality can transform travel reporting, allow journalists to recreate historic events, help science reporters illustrate potential sea level rise, and enable sports fans to "virtually attend" the World Cup or other marquee events. "This is an area of growth for anybody who's into storytelling," Pacheco said in a phone interview. "This is an opportunity to move from storytelling to story experiences." Pacheco also sees revenue opportunities in the technology through product placements and other kinds of new virtual ads. That's not a small consideration for a company like Gannett, which has seen a steady drop in print advertising revenue, recently completed another round of newsroom layoffs, and plans to split its digital and broadcasting divisions from its financially troubled newspaper business next year.'

Prof. Pacheco was interviewed by CBS Interactive's TechRepublic about using virtuality for journalism in the story: "Immersive journalism: What virtual reality means for the future of storytelling and empathy-casting." The piece also referenced Pacheco's Virtual Reality Storytelling course and included a link to a 360 video of the SU football team by class member and football player Eric Jackson.

"There's a virtual reality course being taught this semester in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications called Virtual Reality Storytelling. (Full disclosure: I am taking the course right now. It's awesome.) The course's professor, Dan Pacheco, says demand for the course is high, and for good reason in that it may set you apart in a job interview. "Just having a good understanding of [virtual reality], especially for students in communications who want to work within media is going to be very marketable," Pacheco said. "Every major media company right now is investing in virtual reality.""

Nonny de la Peña had this to say about Professor Pacheco after her acceptance of an I-3 Mirror Award. "Once the [Oculus] Facebook sale happened, $2 billion dollars, you're not so nuts. But before that happened, a lot of people thought trying to do journalism in virtual reality was crazy. But there's somebody in this room who didn't. And this is really important about why innovation is crucial in journalism schools. Not only did that Hunger project start at the USC school of journalism, but a really important person here put on the goggles -- we both had been Knight Grant winners earlier -- Dan Pacheco. And he said, 'Holy shit, there's something real here.' And he invited me up to S.I. Newhouse. At that point I'm carrying 22 motion tracking cameras, huge tripods, crazy equipment, I show up with the flu and 103 degree fever. Something had broken in transport and Dan and I worked until midnight until finally one person in the lab instructed me, and I managed to fix it with a paper clip. And then the next day, Syracuse students were introduced to virtual reality. But something else happened. Dan went on to work at Gannett. He then got them interested in virtual reality. And then Gannett and USA Today began their thrust. Because of Dan's interests, S.I. Newhouse became the very first school to offer an immersive journalism class. And because of Dan's support of this medium, a lot more … many many many new minds were opened to using VR for journalism. So really in many ways, the fact that I'm here is down to having somebody like Dan Pacheco be one of the very first people in my entire trajectory to say to me, hang on, there's something real here. So, you know, I really have to thank him, and I have to thank S.I. Newhouse because I don't know if I would have had the type of trajectory I have without what happened at your school. So thank you so, so much."

"Dan Pacheco, the journalism innovation chair at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, came on board this summer as Gannett Digital's innovator in residence to work on the project. There is huge potential for virtual reality experiences even outside journalism, he says. "When the next great Lexus car comes out or some kind of hybrid or even Tesla, these brands can begin to stop telling people about how cool their cars are. They're going to say, 'Jump inside. Take it for a virtual test drive.' People will do that," Pacheco said."

Creating Your First VR Experience Practical tips for getting started in VR using freely available software and 3D assets. Prof. Dan Pacheco will draw upon material from his Virtual Reality Storytelling class at the S.I. Newhouse School to provide practical steps for creating interactive scenes in Unity3D that can be exported for web and the Oculus Rift. This will include demos and a deep-dive into Harvest of Change, the virtual reality journalism project he managed for The Des Moines Register and Gannett Digital, and some of the final projects from students in VR Storytelling. In addition, he will bring a 360° GoPro camera rig and stitching software to demonstrate how 360° videos can be produced and loaded onto the Samsung GearVR and into Unity3D VR environments.

"Immersive journalism is picking up now in part because the necessary technology has gotten better, cheaper, and more portable. The smartphone's ability to stream high-definition video as well as its increasing popularity-58% of Americans had one as of January 2014, according to Pew Research-have further accelerated adoption. Add to that the more widespread use of interactive data visualizations and advances in wearable computing and the stage may be set for a more robust adoption of virtual reality. "It's not just the media coming to you," says Dan Pacheco, professor of journalism innovation at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. "You move into the media.""

Prof. Pacheco co-authored the primer on virtual reality in this report on The State of Virtual Reality in Journalism for Gannett and the Knight Foundation.

Professor Pacheco has been added to the advisory board for StoryNEXT, a new annual conference focused on innovators in virtual reality storytelling.

The Des Moines Register's Harvest of Change, which was the first project to incorporate virtual reality in a commercial news setting, has won a prestigious Edward R. Murrow award. This emerged from Professor Dan Pacheco working as an innovator in residence at Gannett Digital, where he brought an Oculus Rift and knowledge of how to create VR experiences in Unity.

""The more difficult and complicated the subject, the more we seem to want to close the news app and open up Candy Crush," said Daniel Pacheco, a journalism professor at Syracuse University who specializes in VR storytelling. "VR can counteract this tendency because of its ability make you feel physically present somewhere and to comprehend information by exploring it in an almost physical way. It's hard to tune out or forget something you experienced as if you were there." Great storytelling is evocative and with VR can transport the viewer into another, time, place, and mindset complete with a range of emotions. Take Waves of Grace, a documentary on Liberia's Ebola crisis and how one woman used her immunity to help children orphaned by the disease's spread in 2014. The documentary's co-creator Chris Milk used 360-video to capture the protagonist's, Decontee Davis, surroundings - sights and sounds that put the viewer in the midst of an epidemic. "You relate differently to every other story you read about pandemic disease. Why? Because after that you feel like you were there, as if you stood inside an Ebola clinic while a dying victim was being treated and comforted. It can almost feel like one of your own memories," Pacheco said. "This ability to transport people's consciousness somewhere else is so powerful that I have no doubt it will change the way people relate to issues in the news.""

4/5/2014 Time Warner Cable News interview about using the Oculus Rift for immersive journalism and storytelling.

"Pacheco sees this as one part of a growing field of what he calls Experiential Media. Over the next decade, media will increasingly move into our environment, and we will move into media, Pacheco says. Your body itself, rather than a mouse, computer or phone, will increasingly become the primary mode of navigation through content. Pacheco brought an Oculus Rift to Gannett and helped the company locate a 360-degree photo team and 3D modeler from the gaming industry. The process of building the virtual reality farm included 2D photos and videos, which were then superimposed onto Google maps to recreate the scene. Pacheco says, 'It was like watching a pop-up book come to life.' "

Columbia Journalism Review just listed the "Harvest of Change" virtual reality journalism project that Professor Pacheco co-produced at Gannett as one of 11 noteworthy journalism experiments today. BDJ senior, now graduated, also contributed as a developer.

Professor Pacheco is interviewed by a Swedish tech magazine about virtual reality journalism.

"Students in Pacheco's VR Storytelling course (http://vrstorytelling.org), most of whom have no 3D modeling experience, use Mixamo to easily and inexpensively add interactive characters to scenes that are viewed in Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets"

Prof. Pacheco was invited to present with Nonny de la Peña about Virtual Reality Journalism at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy.

'For a couple of days in journalism circles, "Harvest of Change" was the hot trending topic. Never before had you been able to virtually step inside a story and be enveloped by 360-degree video and hyper-realistic 3D renderings of a landscape you could move inside of. And while the full effect was achieved through the Oculus headset, there were also 2D versions made for desktop computers, which let more people experience the story. You can find it at desmoinesregister.com/pages/interactives/harvest-of-change. The seeds of this "harvest" were planted when Dan Pacheco, chair of journalism innovation at the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University, met with Mitch Gelman, vice president of product at Gannett Digital. '