The virtual world of Second Life exists only in binary code and the imagination of the people who play along.

And yet there are journalists there making a modest income – yes, in real pounds and pence – from peddling their skills to the other ‘inhabitants' of this parallel universe, played out on PCs around the world.

It's essentially a fantasy game but much more than dungeons and dragons could ever hope to be.

It's so compelling and realistic that businesses and organisations originating in real life are operating in Second Life.

BBC Radio 1 recreated the 2006 One Big Weekend event on a 64-acre virtual island in Second Life.

Dell sells PCs in Second Life.

Endemol is running version of Big Brother in Second Life.

And Reuters has a news bureau, which reports news in the virtual ‘SL' universe: secondlife.reuters.com.

There are even a number of Reuters news feeds including the Second Life feed available to players via RSS.

Essentially, Reuters has a local reporter reporting on local news.

There are also several large internal newspaper presences within SL all reporting on local content.

'The AvaStar - Second Life's tabloid paper

Much of the news in SL is niche news, from small publications covering individual simulation platforms, or specific interests or genres of characters such as sci-fi or vampire.

They are all internally based within the world and only cover internal news on these genres.

SL hack

It is quite conceivable to make a small virtual living, enough to make the rest of the game free, as an SL reporter.

If you can get yourself a decent story and dash off a couple of paragraphs then you can make 300 to 1,000 ‘Linden Dollars' per post, paid by the 'papers'. There's currency conversion to Sterling, so you can pocket what you earn. Or buy up some virtual real estate.

The bulk of news delivery, niche and general, is done through the plethora of personal blogs and Flickr accounts, or through online portals such as secondlifeherald.com.

Here's their spiel: "Herald advertisers reach thousands of Second Life residents every day. We offer box ads at the top of the left- and right-hand columns, banner ads at the top of the page, and one-time posts in the main thread."

Then last December, SL got it's very own tabloid: The AvaStar.

AvaStar editor-in-chief Regis Braathens

Axel Springer, the publisher of Germany's top-selling Bild newspaper, jumped on the bandwagon to run a weekly gossip tabloid about the meta-world citizens for site users.

The German publisher has a "real" virtual office in Second Life with an actual editor-in-chief and reporters wandering across the site to report on the 2m-plus residents.

It is talked-up as a colourful tabloid, with snippets about showbiz and human interest tales from the avatar world.

The newspaper is written in English and each issue is currently free, although it will soon go on sale for 150 Linden Dollars. It isavailable through "virtual mailboxes" across the Metaverse.

And though AvaStar is the first tabloid by a traditional publisher, SL is no stranger to journalists.

Even reporters' courses and journalism training are freely available.

There are several examples on online journalism education in SL, such as the virtual classrooms of Canada's Loyalist College Pioneer.

Get your journalism training here!

Practical skill training outside a course/classroom environment is also common, with most SL papers proving basic textual 'how-to' guides for new virtual reporters.

It's all going so well that when HTFP visited one of the big firms' newsrooms, almost all the editorial staff were out getting stories. Or maybe they just knew we were coming…

The SL newspapers are available from vending machines, and those companies already enjoying a presence have business plans like here in the real world, where they'll eventually gain more and more advertising and become paid-for.