Subscribers of The New York Times can expect a little something extra with their newspapers the weekend of Nov. 7: Google Cardboard.
The newspaper has teamed up with Google to deliver more than a million Cardboard viewers to home delivery subscribers as part of a new virtual reality project. The Times will also be sending out promo codes via email, giving Insiders and certain digital subscribers the chance to redeem a free Cardboard viewer.
You'll want that Cardboard viewer to check out a new film from the newspaper called The Displaced, which "captures the resilience of three extraordinary children uprooted by war, all through the lens of virtual reality," the Times said.
Created by The New York Times Magazine in collaboration with Chris Milk and his virtual reality company Vrse, the film lets readers experience what it's like to be one of the 30 million children around the world caught in the global refugee crisis. You'll get a look inside the daily lives of refugee children in South Sudan, eastern Ukraine, and Syria.
In a statement, the newspaper's Executive Editor Dean Baquet called the new film "the first critical, serious piece of journalism using virtual reality."
"This is the Times at its best," he said.
The film will air on a new app dubbed NYT VR, which will be available for download in the Google Play and iOS App Store Nov. 5. The app supports VR playback via Cardboard and 360-degree view, and will also feature sponsored content from advertisers GE and Mini. A version of The Displaced film will also be available in 2D on NYTimes.com for those without Cardboard.
Meanwhile, there's one Web giant the Times probably won't be partnering with any time soon: Amazon. The online retailer on Monday fired back at a recent exposé that detailed the Web giant's "tough" and "combative" workplace culture. Amazon's Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Jay Carney, claims the piece's authors, Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, failed to "check or vet the anecdotes and quotes from sources willing to go on the record," and suggested that sources who painted a negative picture of the company culture "might have an axe to grind."