NPR wins award to experiment with virtual-reality audio

Current.org reports that a team at NPR is the winner of a grant to develop virtual-reality stories that will transport listeners to audio-rich soundscapes.

The NPR project is among 11 winners of the Journalism 360 Challenge awards announced Tuesday. Presented by the Knight Foundation, Google News Lab and the Online News Association, the grants of $15,000–$30,000 support the use of immersive storytelling in news.

Other winners include efforts to make immersive storytelling more accessible to community and ethnic media and to help journalists and others create location-based data visualizations in a virtual-reality format.NPR’s video team includes Bronson Arcuri, CJ Riculan, Maia Stern and Nick Michael, who worked on the Knight Foundation grant application.

NPR’s team is receiving $15,000 to develop “best practices for immersive storytelling audio by producing two virtual reality stories with a particular focus on sound-rich scenes,” according to a statement from the grantors.