What’s Next for the business of news arrived on the doorstep of a few homes this weekend. Subscribers to the print edition of the New York Times received a cardboard Virtual Reality (VR) viewer with their Sunday paper.

NYT VR may also foreshadow an opportunity for news publishers with print circulation. This thrilling (no kidding) new product is made possible by the combination of a web-connected smartphone and a cardboard viewer that comes with the old school paper. There are other interesting cross-channel opportunities too.

Mini (cars) sponsors the launch – in printed call-outs in the NYT paper, on the home screen of the downloaded app, and with branded video content wedged high up on the menu of the other VR video news. Unfortunately for Mini, next to the powerhouse storytelling of the Times, supercharged by the beautiful documentary use of the VR technology, the VR video for Mini feels a bit thin. In the very near future however, these branded VR stories will be much improved (for the brand) and more directly connected to opportunities for lead gen, product trial and sales.

The revenue potential of VR news products is as brilliant as a solar collector in the California desert. Publishers will become studios – imagine the demand from house hunters and homebuilders when the local paper begins offering mobile VR video stories (and VR viewers distributed with the printed newspaper!). The near-future application of VR video for experience-based news (like local sports) may open up a whole new role for (and revenue from) brands when the viewer controls the screen.

Virtual Reality for news brands, printed & mobile, is more than just a new way to tell the same story. It gives print readers a reason to engage with the new brand in digital. And it gives digital readers a new reason to value the physical medium. And what remains to be explored is what types of 360˚ news experience can also accommodate sponsors –VR native advertising anyone?