Teaching journalism with virtual worlds

Joshua Fouts writes, "Rita J. King and I are premiering *today* a new documentary exploring the potential of immersive virtual journalism as a tool for empowering global journalism as the industry continues its transformation amidst the current upheaval and collapse. The documentary comes out of a project we did with the Larry Pintak at the American University in Cairo in which we brought a group of 8 Egyptian political activist bloggers into Second Life to explore the potential of the space for empowering and augmenting their work. We were fortunate that our first effort brought a high ranking US State Department official, James K. Glassman, who was then US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy. Some interesting issues came up."

The Launch of a Journalistic Experiment: The Virtual Newsroom of the American University in Cairo