Immersive journalism pioneer receives coveted Peabody Award

ASU Professor of Practice Nonny de la Peña receives new Field Builder Award


March 24, 2022

Immersive journalism pioneer Nonny de la Peña has received a Peabody Field Builder Award, one in a new category of awards from the organization whose stamp of approval signals excellence in media. 

The award was presented to de la Peña by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, who praised her ability to “subordinate technology to a greater purpose, which is to understand each other, to love each other.” Iñárritu said, “We all, the ones who have experienced your work, we have been transformed.” Photo of a woman with text that reads: Peabody winner Nonny de la Pena, Field Builder Award, legacy winner, digital and interactive storytelling. Download Full Image

Determined each year by a diverse Board of Jurors through unanimous vote, Peabody Awards are given in the categories of entertainment, documentary, news, podcast/radio, arts, children and youth, public service, multimedia programming — and now digital and interactive storytelling. The new Field Builder Award honors an artist, project or technological innovation that enabled or inspired new modes of interactive storytelling that are now widely adopted.

The first winners of the Peabodys’ digital and interactive storytelling awards were announced March 24, on peabodyawards.com The Peabody Awards unveiled the new interactive storytelling categories in June 2021, in recognition of how online storytelling forms have advanced and grown recently. At that time, the awards body also announced the creation of a new interactive board that would screen projects for the awards categories, honoring exemplary achievements in gaming, interactive journalism, interactive documentary, virtual reality, augmented reality, social video and transmedia storytelling.

“Creators have been telling amazingly powerful stories in these formats for a long time now,” said Jeffrey Jones, Peabody’s executive director. “Peabody is excited to be much more thoughtful and intentional in recognizing them as stories that matter, standing squarely beside the traditional broadcast categories we have long awarded.” 

De la Peña is the program director of Arizona State University’s Narrative and Emerging Media program, a joint L.A.-based undertaking by The Sidney Poitier New American Film School, in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

The program focuses on new narratives developed using emerging media technologies such as virtual, mixed and augmented reality in the areas of arts, culture and nonfiction. De la Peña is extending this programming alongside curriculum to the Media and Immersive eXperience (MIX) Center in Mesa, Arizona, opening in the fall to serve as a home for The Sidney Poitier New American Film School and new interdisciplinary degree programs based in extended reality and immersive media.

“I’m deeply honored to be recognized by Peabody for my career dedicated to establishing the field of immersive journalism,” de la Peña said. “The prestige of winning the Peabody is unparalleled for a reporter, and I am thrilled that I will be able to carry this legacy award with me as we create news for the future.”

Earlier this month, de la Peña was also inducted into the South by Southwest (SXSW) Hall of Fame. SXSW, located in Austin, Texas, celebrates music, film and technology through festivals, conferences and interactive media each year; the SXSW Hall of Fame honors “exceptional trailblazers whose work has helped shape the connected world and who continue to guide digital industries.”

“It is such a privilege that the community of SXSW has chosen me to represent the unbridled spirit and resilience of this world class festival,” de la Peña said of the honor. “As a SXSW Hall of Fame inductee, I am thrilled to have been selected to join a roster of incredible people doing extraordinary things.” 

“Nonny is truly deserving of the Field Builder Award, and of her place in the SXSW Hall of Fame,” said Steven J. Tepper, dean and director of the Herberger Institute. “She has been a relentless champion for inclusion and for using immersive media to challenge injustice and lift up diverse voices.”   

“We are thrilled to celebrate Nonny’s Peabody and her SXSW Hall of Fame appointment,” said Cronkite School Dean Battinto L. Batts Jr. “We continue to be inspired by Nonny’s innovative leadership, blazing the path of immersive journalism.”

In 2015, de la Peña was named the “Godmother of Virtual Reality” by the Guardian. She is the founder and CEO of Emblematic Group, a digital media company focused on producing immersive virtual reality content. Her work in virtual reality has been shared by the BBC, Mashable, Vice and Wired. 

Her MIT Journal Presence paper “Immersive Journalism: Immersive Virtual Reality for the First-Person Experience of News” is the second-most downloaded article in the journal’s history and her Ted Talk “The future of news? Virtual reality” has garnered 1.3 million views.

De la Peña is a New American Fellow, Yale Poynter Media Fellow and former correspondent for Newsweek. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology and visual and environmental studies from Harvard University, a Master of Arts in online communities from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and a PhD in media arts and practice from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

At the 2018 SXSW Conference, she presented the Convergence Keynote Reaching for Truth: Unlocking the Power of Human Storytelling in Virtual and Augmented Reality,” in which she highlighted the expansive opportunities of virtual and augmented reality beyond entertainment.

Deborah Sussman

Communications and media specialist, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

480-965-0478

‘Godmother of virtual reality’ joins ASU to build new L.A.-based program, center


June 16, 2021

Nonny de la Peña, dubbed the "Godmother of Virtual Reality” by Forbes and the Guardian, is joining Arizona State University to design and lead a new graduate program and center in emerging media and narrative based in Los Angeles.

Steven J. Tepper, dean of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, said that de la Peña’s new role at ASU is the result of a challenge that ASU President Michael Crow issued jointly to the Herberger Institute and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication: to imagine bringing something impactful and distinctive to the global capital of entertainment and storytelling, given the legacy of the Herald Examiner building as a center for media and storytelling and the activation of The Sidney Poitier New American Film School. black and white headshot of journalist Nonny de la Pena Nonny de la Peña is a leader in immersive journalism, a field that she is widely credited with establishing. Photo courtesy of Nonny de la Peña. Download Full Image

“There’s a convergence in journalism and film and other forms of storytelling,” Tepper said, “and so the question was, could we design something that would be innovative?”

Enter de la Peña.

A New American Fellow, Yale Poynter Media Fellow and former correspondent for Newsweek, de la Peña is a leader in immersive journalism, a field that she is widely credited with establishing. Her paper in the MIT journal Presence, “Immersive Journalism: Immersive Virtual Reality for the First-Person Experience of the News,” is the second most downloaded article in the journal’s history. She was named WSJ Technology Innovator of the Year in 2018 and one of CNET en Español’s 20 most influential Latinos for her groundbreaking work, and her TEDWomen talk, which describes the use of cutting-edge technologies for creating intense and empathic engagement on the part of viewers, has garnered upward of 1,300,000 views. The piece “Hunger in Los Angeles,” on which she collaborated, became the first VR piece ever shown at Sundance and inspired Wired Magazine to nominate her a “#MakeTechHuman Agent of Change.”

“Technology has the power to put people in the story, so they remember it with their body, not just their mind,” de la Peña said. “I’m joining ASU to build a program and a center in emerging media and narrative because I want to shift the demographics of who’s creating and using these new technologies. This new form of storytelling can offer a visceral and positive impact on our perception of the world, and we want the center to be a place that takes advantage of that potential while supporting anyone who wants to harness these creation tools to tell their own stories.”

“Nonny de la Peña’s fusion of gaming technologies with journalism is the most significant advancement in news since television in the 1950s. She’s a game-changer,” said Dianah Wynter, inaugural director of The Sidney Poitier New American Film School. “Collaborating with Nonny and (the Cronkite School) to build a center for our interactive programs will give students the opportunity to enhance their training in filmmaking, screenwriting and VFX with emerging trends in VR, MR and XR.”

De la Peña is tasked with tying the work in emerging media and narrative into programming and curriculum at ASU at Mesa City Center, a 118,000-square-foot facility that will open in downtown Mesa in fall 2022 and serve as a home for the film school as well as for new interdisciplinary degree programs based in extended reality and immersive media. 

De la Peña’s appointment is in both the Herberger Institute and the Cronkite School, and the L.A.-based program and center will be a collaborative effort between the two.

“Nonny de la Peña’s work is all about telling stories in new ways that help us better understand our world and each other,” said Kristin Gilger, interim dean of the Cronkite School. “This partnership with the Herberger Institute will give our students the opportunity to augment the skills they’ve acquired as journalists with powerful new approaches in technology and storytelling.”

De la Peña is the founder and CEO of Emblematic Group, a digital media company focused on immersive virtual, mixed and augmented reality. She earned a BA in sociology and visual and environmental studies from Harvard University, an MA in online communities from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, and a PhD in media arts and practice from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Update: Due to family reasons, Dianah Wynter did not take the position of director of The Sidney Poitier New American Film School. On Nov. 16, 2021, Cheryl Boone Isaacs was announced as the founding director of the school.

Deborah Sussman

Communications and media specialist, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

480-965-0478