From USA Today to the BBC, journalists are paying more attention to virtual communities—writing about computer-simulated marriages, multimillion-dollar economies based on imaginary goods, and the countless hours that millions of users spend inside video game worlds, talking, building, and even publishing.

So, last week, journalist and video game evangelist Wagner James Au decided to boost coverage of the virtual world Second Life by hiring virtual stringers to cover stories. Au will pay the stringers with the in-game currency Linden dollars, which can either be used in-world or be exchanged for real-world currency on a "virtual black market."

Au himself is paid by Second Life owner Linden Lab of Linden Research Inc., but his work is too evocative to dismiss as pure company PR. His stories on Second Life have appeared in Salon.com and Wired, and he's been interviewed about his work as an embedded virtual journalist by NPR and the BBC, among other publications.

Au's constant refrain: Virtual world news and events have real-world repercussions. Or, more to the point: This isn't just a video game.

In Second Life, each user creates a pixilated persona, or "avatar," to interact with the more than 25,000 subscribers living on 12,000 acres of virtual land inside the game. The subscribers have used the space for a huge array of projects: staging Katrina relief fundraisers, hosting virtual book signings with popular authors, and shopping for virtual products with "Lindens," the in-game currency.

Other imaginary worlds are growing just as rapidly. According to reports cited by IGE, a company that deals in monetary exchanges between the real world and MMORPG communities, the "marketplace for virtual assets" is nearing $900 million this year.

Publish.com interviewed Au about Second Life, his virtual experiences, and his upcoming book.

Why should digital publishers pay attention to virtual journalism? Why should people outside of Second Life pay attention to what's happening in SL?

Only in an online world can you meet, in an immersive, compelling sense, with people quite literally from all over globe, from a vast range of backgrounds, and interview them with a level of anonymity that enables them to speak openly and freely.

A popular talk show broadcasts from within the video game "Halo." Click here to read more.

As a reporter's tool, it [an online community] has the potential to be more powerful than the cell phone, the fax machine, the video camera and the tape recorder combined. Once they are recognized for what they are—international gathering places that transcend race, class, nationality, and the accident of individual identity—I think online worlds like Second Life will become tremendously important to the global polity.

Last Presidential election, there was an unofficial John Kerry campaign headquarters in Second Life. Next Presidential election, I predict there will be an *official* campaign headquarters in Second Life.

On still another level, an online world like Second Life enables creators to prototype technology and creative projects that may very well influence the real world—such as the story I wrote about a schizophrenia simulator in Second Life.

Are there other writers doing this kind of journalism?

There are other bloggers who write about online worlds, but I believe I'm the only blogger contracted by the company that owns that world to cover the society that its subscribers are creating within it.

This has sometimes of course led to suggestions that New World Notes is a "company organ," but Linden Lab has no editorial control over my blog, beyond the limits [requiring that writers] adhere to SL's Community Standards and my own standard to not publish anything that would be explicitly injurious to the society I'm covering. I really report on what I want to report on.

There's definitely not anyone that's done regular journalism [in virtual worlds]. I know when World of Warcraft started out they got game journalists to describe the beta experience. But when they launched, they didn't do it anymore.

That's insane, there's like 3 million people on World of Warcraft, literally from everywhere in the world. They're mostly just killing orcs, but there's got to be just tons of really cool people doing interesting stuff socially in the world. They [probably] have really interesting stories that they would only feel comfortable telling when they are an elf.

Next Page: The hot stories in Second Life.

What are the important stories in Second Life right now?

The continual merging of real life with the virtual one. The society is large enough that Residents are meeting in real life in sizable groups (as with last week's Second Life Community Convention that attracted over 140 Residents to NYC), and that's going to have a big impact.

The society is large enough that a significant and growing minority is making some or all of its actual living with content/service creation in SL, and that's also impactful.

The growing international flavor is also a big deal, something I'm hoping to follow intensely and hopefully contribute to, whether writing about a Chinese "sweatshop worker" or bringing in famous policy analyst Thomas P.M. Barnett to speak to a global body of Residents.

How does your blog affect Second Life?

I'll hear back a lot from the residents, that people started talking to them about the thing they are doing, and that's really exciting. Also, if it gets picked up by the mainstream media, then it will have a big impact.

In that detective story I did, a couple of the British journals picked it up. The guy from the UK Times created an avatar and went straight to her [in Second Life], and she kind of freaked. Now, I'll tell people when I write about them, that on occasion, the New York Times or CNN will notice a story and they'll want to interview you.

How exactly do you report a story in Second Life?

The lovely thing about being an embedded reporter in an online world is there's always a transcript! So after an interview, I copy and paste the chat history of our conversation to Word, then wade in, summarizing the details and action of it while extracting the best quotes.

For example, my profile of Jason Foo, the crippled Special Forces commando who earned his post-war living as a Second Life real estate developer/casino magnate, probably took some four-five encounters over a month, first in casual chat, then in private Instant Messages, with perhaps the most wrenching quotes coming late via e-mail.

What sort of a pay scale are you thinking about for the virtual stringers? What sort of writing standards will you have for your stringers?

Depending on length, I'm going to first try out $6,250-12,500 [Linden dollars] as a pay range—$25-50, at current market rates. It's not much, I know, but this is really just an experiment at this point. If it's successful, I'll certainly ask Linden Lab to boost my editorial budget.

Above all, I'll enjoin them not to write glorified press releases for Second Life, the world or the company, and also, not to turn personal disputes between Residents into public catfights. I'll leave that to other Second Life blogs.

Big plans for the Second Life book? Is there really so much that hasn't already been said?

I'm working with an agent to hone the proposal, and hope to send it out after the holiday hiatus for publishers. It'll probably comprise excerpts from nearly three years writing this blog, woven into a narrative and a framework that highlights the theme for each story/set of stories.

Above all, I want to book to appeal to readers outside the tech/game readership, and like the blog, appeal to a popular audience who is tech savvy, but is actually more interested in the cool, powerful, thought-provoking stories and ideas that an online world—and the idea of such a world—brings out.

Discuss Journalism Grows Inside Virtual Worlds   >>> Be the FIRST to comment on this article!

>>> More Online Media Articles          >>> More By Jason Boog