Harvest of Change: Virtual reality journalism

The Des Moines Register has a new piece up. It looks like a video game, informs like journalism. They partnered with all kinds of people to put this thing together, combining photos, reporting, standard and 360-degree video and audio recording into a 3D rendering of an Iowa farm. The full package includes text, photos, video and the virtual reality environment. Learn more about how they did it and why.

Sharyn Jackson and Christopher Gannon (Part 1 of 5):

On the lawn of a ranch house abutting rolling acres of emerald pasture, a red-haired girl, almost 7, leads a calf in circles with the help of her family.

It's early July, and Jillian Dammann is getting ready to show her bottle calf, Olaf, at the Page County Fair. Her parents, Justin and Jennifer, are teaching her how to lead him, and her little brother, Jayden, is helping.

Named after a character in Disney's "Frozen," this calf from the Dammanns' livestock breeding operation lost its source of sustenance when its mother died. So Jillian helps rear it, feeding Olaf milk from a bottle that's bigger than the pink cowboy boots she wears, here in the southwest Iowa county where Jessie Field Shambaugh founded 4-H clubs more than a century ago.