Congratulations to Media Producing faculty Sam Baumel, the co-founder and executive producer at Primary: News in Depth. The immersive spatial journalism platform is a winner of the 2026 Apple Design Award in the Social Impact category. According to Apple, the winners in this category ‘improve lives in a meaningful way and shine a light on crucial issues.’ Primary was co-created for Apple Vision Pro with journalist Maura Axelrod.
In this interview with Apple Developer, Sam said, “From the beginning, we wanted Primary to be built around working journalists. In many cases, contributors were already in those places reporting. Spatial capture became an additional layer of storytelling, not a separate production altogether. Some already had compatible iPhones, and in other cases we provided phones so they could shoot in spatial while continuing their normal reporting work.”
