Journalism has been in a near-constant state of tumultuous change since the advent of the Internet and other digital technologies. The consequences of digital disruption have been profound for journalism and society. Newspapers have rapidly vanished from the landscape as the long-standing economic underpinnings of commercial news media have shifted in seismic fashion away from the analog world of media and into the digital realm of modern communication platforms. Citizens and reporters alike increasingly use their mobile and other digital devices to access news and other media content as well as create it. Data in fact show that three-quarters of the world's population access the Internet solely via their smartphone (Handley, 2019). They do so in almost nonstop fashion fueled by the increasing ubiquity of wearable devices such as smartwatches and other smart media continuously connected to the Internet. As augmented reality and virtual reality gradually build momentum in the marketplace, the Metaverse is likely to further fuel the disruption of journalism. Analysts point to the media as among the five industries the Metaverse is most likely to transform (Danise, 2022; Raftery, 2022; Ball, 2022).

The thesis of this book is that the Metaverse presents a two-part challenge to journalism. First, the Metaverse is a new arena for news reporting and journalism needs to establish a presence in this arena to cover important stories and reach a growing audience especially younger audiences engaging in the Metaverse. Second, the Metaverse signals an opportunity for news media innovation in storytelling and other journalism methods of production, distribution, and management. Failure to meet these challenges will likely lead to a lost opportunity for journalism to become a vital platform in the Metaverse as it emerges in the 21st century. Moreover, journalism as an institution and public good will likely further erode as it has done in the age of the Internet to date.

In his acclaimed novel Snow Crash, science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in 1992 introduced or at least popularized the term Metaverse as a virtual world where humans might one day all live, work, and play. In this virtual realm, there also might be journalism to create and experience. Stephenson's was a dystopian vision, a cautionary tale.