A grant from the McCormick Foundation makes it possible for WSU’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication to take bold steps in new media.

WSU is hosting a Virtual Journalism Summit on Monday to bring together, for the first time, the leaders in the burgeoning industry of journalism in 3-D spaces. This refers to “in-world” journalism that covers the events, gossip and entertainment of life in 3-D platforms such as Second Life, Club Penguin and Sony PlayStation’s Home, among others.

“The purpose of this event is to shed light on the phenomenon of reporting and media in 3-D spaces,” said Brett Atwood, event organizer and Murrow College assistant professor.

The summit is a day-long event with speakers and panels addressing methods that have worked and methods that have not worked in both citizen and professional journalism in these forums.

“We are not trying to say that this is the next big thing,” Atwood said. “But this is a vibrant, fast-growing community and legitimate stories exist in those spaces.” Speakers include CNN.com Senior Producer Lila King, coming to represent CNN.com’s citizen journalism forum iReport.com.

Other speakers and panelists include Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life; Lane Merrifield, CEO of Club Penguin; Erica Driver, co-founder of ThinkBalm; and two virtual world journalists, Wagner James Au and Bernhard Drax.

The culmination of the event is a physical and virtual world Q-and-A session with 2009 Murrow Symposium Lifetime Achievement Award recipients Helen Thomas and Bob Schieffer. A celebrity avatar creator made avatars for the two journalists so they can simultaneously speak on the real and 3-D WSU campuses, and people around the world can participate.

“This event sends the message that the Murrow college is staying relevant in current media trends,” Atwood said. “We want to stay aware of digital trends and pass those on to students.” WSU is already in touch with the trend of virtual worlds and their relation to education. The Center for Distance and Professional Education helped create a realistic WSU campus in Second Life.

David Cillay, director of the Center for Distance and Professional Education, said he is excited for the summit because it shows a willingness to explore the possibilities of virtual worlds’ opportunities for education.

“It demonstrates a blending of the online and on-campus worlds,” Cillay said.

One student already taking advantage of the opportunities of the virtual campus is graduate student Heather McGeachy. As part of their thesis, fine arts graduate students put a display in a culminating art show on April 10.

What makes McGeachy unique is her art is also on display in the virtual WSU Museum of Art.

“My work has always been about a blurring or melding of virtual experience and physical experience,” she said.

McGeachy said she enjoys that virtual worlds allow people to bypass the judgmental phase of relationships. One cannot have preconceived notions based on an avatar, she said.

Lectures in virtual worlds are also a different experience because the audience members can interact with one another, with the Internet and with the lecturer in the course of the speech, making it a richer experience, she said.

“It’s a phenomenal way of interacting,” McGeachy said.

McGeachy also teaches a digital media course and is looking forward to the virtual journalism summit because of the well-known virtual world professionals coming to campus.

“I feel fortunate that our campus is part of something so cutting edge,” she said.