CNN has announced the official launch of its new immersive journalism unit and virtual reality platform within CNN Digital called CNNVR.

The new unit will produce VR content designed around CNNs already existing news coverage to produce major news stories in 360-degree video, deliver live  streaming VR of breaking events and also produce weekly VR columns.

CNNs global team designing content for the new CNNVR has journalists across the world in New York, Atlanta, London, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Dubai, Johannesburg, Tokyo and Beijing.

To reach as broad an audience as possible CNN will be delivering its VR content to as many devices as it can. CNN’s mobile app will be upgrading to provide VR content for Android and iOS—which the news organization boasts will make CNN the third largest VR app behind Facebook and YouTube.

CNN also announced plans to release apps for all the major headsets including Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream and Oculus Rift.

“What I think CNN is embarking on is phenomenal,” Dipak Patel, chief executive officer of VR publishing startup Zeality Inc., told SiliconANGLE. “What they’re looking to do is connect audiences to news around the world by really taking people there. When you see something like a CNN come out and say they’re using a technology like VR that really shifts the tectonic plates of journalism.”

Patel believes that this announcement will also likely embolden other news organizations, especially smaller startups and younger newsmakers to produce their own VR content. He also believes that this will help better connect CNN with younger audiences and get them to embrace news content.

Starting today, viewers can reach VR content via CNN with the first of many to come by visiting CNN’s “How to Watch VR” page.

Already available is a visit to the running of the bulls event in Pamplona, Spain in full, immersive VR video as part of CNN’s piece “Go running with the bulls in Pamplona.” The video runs almost six minutes long and includes multiple segments of 360 video with narration mixed between Spanish and English showing crowds and the event itself.

As part of the nature of virtual reality, subtitles take on a different visual context. Instead of appearing at the bottom of the user’s vision when Spanish is spoken, as is used in two-dimensional video, subtitles appear in front of the speaker and the viewer must turn to look at them to read the words as they appear.

Before this launch, CNN put a year of experimentation into VR journalism and broadcasting, producing more than 50 news stories in high-quality 360 video.

These news stories have included VR coverage of the devastation of Aleppo—a city at the center of Syria’s civil war—a front row view of the U.S. presidential inauguration and an immersive view of a skydiving experience. CNN reports that its experimentation in VR has produced a total of 30 million views for its Facebook 360 content alone.

More news stories and events can be viewed at CNN.com/VR. The CNN app is available for Android on the Google Play Store and for iOS on the iTunes App Store.

Image: CNN