Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Mapping

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – innovative ways to use maps

Judith Townend — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:00:36 +0000

Unusual and innovative ways to use maps, as selected by 10000words.net: seven examples at this link. Tipster: Judith Townend. To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link - we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – local media maps

Laura Oliver — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:25:33 +0000

Local media: Looking for local bloggers and independent news sites in your area? Try Justin William's Google map of local news sites. Tipster: Laura Oliver. To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link - we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

ITN maps news items with Google mash-up

Stuart Goodwin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:30:29 +0000

British news company ITN has started to develop Google Maps to its advantage: a new mashed-up map of its news stories uses Google Gears Geolocation API to determine the user’s location and provide them with geographically relevant news.

The site provides a map with pinpoint flags highlighting the location that a particular news item is related to. All the user has to do is click on the individual flag and read on for the full story.

The reader can change the destination to view worldwide stories, while also being able to access archive stories stretching back to the previous month.

Website mibly.com has also used Google Maps, on this instance, working in conjunction with BBC iPlayer, tagging where a certain programme was located, allowing UK residents to view the selected show by clicking on a flag.

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Mapping: BBC reports live event with map tools; WaPo plots Travis Fox

Laura Oliver — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:42:13 +0000

Mapperz blog is claiming a BBC first, as the corporation used a series of mapping tools to cover today’s parade in London of Britain’s Beijing Olympics team.

The interactive map featured Twitter updates from BBC sport journalists Tom Fordyce and Ollie Williams and was capable of showing photos submitted by spectators (though it appears only one has been uploaded at time of writing).

It links to a Flickr group of images from the parade, live text updates on the BBC website and a full news and video report on the event.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is plotting the progress of Travis Fox, as the video producer makes a journey across the states reporting on how the economic downturn is affecting citizens.

Fox’s route is shown with markers indicating video posts and photos, which are also included in his blog reports below the map.

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Geotagged journalism: behind Trinity Mirror’s news maps

Laura Oliver — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:30:46 +0000

At last week’s Digital Editors’ Network event in Preston, Trinity Mirror’s new geotagged news maps were a popular topic of conversation.

Launched on the Liverpool Echo and Liverpool Daily Post (LDP) websites, the maps let readers search for news by postcode.

But what information are journalists required to input to make the maps work? and how does this affect their newsgathering?

Alison Gow, deputy editor of the LDP, explained the system to Journalism.co.uk:

“At the moment, every time our reporters create a news story they fill in certain fields which dictate where a story is placed online (e.g. story type, keyword tags, author).

“For stories to appear on the map the reporter simply ensures the new ‘postcode’ field is also completed; they do this by chosing from a vast selection of regional postcodes which are already included in a dropdown menu.”

For stories that could be tagged with multiple postcodes, the primary site of the news, e.g. the accident site in a road crash, is currently being used, though multiple location tagging is being looked into.

“We don’t use them for everything; there would be no point in geotagging Liverpool town hall for every council story, for example. But for location-specific articles they work really well.

“As it grows the map offers greater potential for ‘news from your street’ for readers, and it makes the Post and Echo sites more sticky – people can see markers for stories in their area and this should encourage them to click through and read more,” said Gow.

To develop the project further, the same map format is being looked at for other editorial content, such as business articles, she added.

Any more questions about the journalists involvement with these maps? Leave a comment and hopefully we can get a response.

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Yorkshire Post maps falling petrol prices

Laura Oliver — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:17:28 +0000

The Yorkshire Post is using an interactive map of local petrol stations’ fuel prices to help its readers in this time of credit crunchiness.

Built using data from whatgas.com, the map flags up petrol stations in the paper’s readership area and allows users to update the current prices of unleaded, diesel and LPG fuel.

Even better the feature is tied into a news article reporting on fuel prices in the region – nicely done.

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The Guardian publishes first ‘geolocated’ article

Fred Friedrich — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:03:05 +0000

The Guardian has published its first article including geolocation data and is using geographic tagging to track reporters covering the US presidential race. Every time a reporter posts a blog their location will be highlighted on a Google map.

Geotagged content has been around for a while now, but is starting to take effect in the UK media: last week, the Liverpool Echo, published a hyperlocal news map.

On Guardian.co.uk’s Inside Blog, Paul Carvill describes the geolocating process: reporters add their latitude and longitude to their article or blog post, and their location will appear in the RSS feed, which in turn can be fed into a Google map using a java script.

Online users can type in their postcode to find out what is being reported in their area, or alternatively click on an area of the map to source information from another location.

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Evening Leader plots UFO sightings with Dipity

Laura Oliver — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:44:57 +0000

Nice use of timeline builder Dipity by the Evening Leader: the paper has plotted videos and text reports of UFO sitings in the area onto a timeline, turned it into a widget and embedded it on its website.

What’s extra nice is that the Dipity widget lets readers look at the info as a timeline, map, flipbook or list. Using the third-party service helps the newspaper get extra mileage out of what are no doubt already popular online stories.

The feature has also been made ‘public’ through dipity’s site to help drive traffic back to the Evening Leader.

The tool has previously been used by the Manchester Evening News for its coverage of a proposed congestion charge for the city; and the Liverpool Daily Post to create a 24-hour snapshot of Liverpool as this year’s European Capital of Culture.

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Lloyd’s List maps anti-piracy campaign

Laura Oliver — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:12:09 +0000

That’s maritime piracy we’re talking here, not music downloads…

Lloyd’s List has created a microsite to support its ‘Save our Seafarers’ campaign complete with news updates, video and an interactive map of the latest attacks.

The campaign was launched in reaction to a rise in piracy attacks off the Somalian coast. According to Lloyd’s, 11 vessels have been hijacked and 234 seafarers are currently being held.

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Geo-what? Oh, it’s coming to the UK soon…

Judith Townend — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:07:42 +0000

This week saw the launch of a hyperlocal news map for the Liverpool Echo, as announced by Sly Bailey at the AOP Digital Publishing Summit (follow link for report in MediaGuardian).

It geotags news content so each user can search for news by postcode.

Nothing new there, web-savvy newshounds might think, but actually it is:

Though Archant announced plans for geotagged sites last October (it started with Jobs24 – a winner at yesterday’s NS ADM Awards – and Homes24 and has plans to roll out geotagged news content in 2008) to date we’re still waiting for the official launch of geotagged news.

Yesterday we reported that American site outside.in will be launching in the UK, which will link news with local areas (as localised as users specify). Outside.in thinks its opportunity has come about as a result of:

“The demand for personalized information on the web, and the failure of the newspaper industry to capitalize on featuring hyperlocal content” (Nina Grigoriev, outside.in)

Journalism.co.uk thought it was time for a bit of a run-down on the development of geotagging in the UK.

First, what is it?
Journalists record the locations referred to in each story and add their postcodes as metadata when uploading their copy to the web.

In that way, geotagged content allows users to prioritise the news they see online according to postcodes.

Where are we at in the UK?
The Liverpool Echo is the first site (of the large publishing groups) to do so in the UK. Although other sites have incorporated mapping into their sites, no other places has successfully incorporated news content as well.

The BBC plans to invest £68 million across its network of local sites, which will be decided upon by the BBC Trust in February 2009. Online Journalism Blog reported a sneak preview in January 2008, though the BBC have since asked us not to refer to the sites as ‘hyperlocal’.

Critics such as Trinity Mirror’s CEO, Sly Bailey, have voiced concerns over the BBC’s local video proposals, saying they will provide ‘unfair competition’ for the regional media.

Northcliffe is also developing geotagged content on its revamped thisis sites, and told Press Gazette in June the process has been difficult: “Because not all stories affect only one specific point, the company is finding geocoding challenging,” Hardie said.

According to the article: “The localisation functions will remain hidden until journalists have built up enough stories with postcode data.”

Back in July 2007 we saw reports of Sky geotagging its news, but it hasn’t developed at the same speed or as widely as in the US.

What’s happening in the US?
Everyblock is developing fast across the US. It’s a new experiment in journalism and data, offering feeds of local information and data for every city block in Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC, with more cities to come. Not in the UK yet, but watch this space.

Elsewhere, the Washington Post has used outside.in’s maps for their own site, while the New York Times’ Boston.com (the online Boston Globe) uses MetaCarta’s geographic search technology for maps.

So, what does this mean for UK based geotagging?
With the arrival of highly efficient US based sites such as outside.in (who said an UK based office is a possibility) maybe it’s time for Archant, Trinity Mirror and Northcliffe to get their skates on before it’s too late.

Please send us your examples of UK based geotagged content, from formal publications or otherwise, as we want to track it as it expands in the UK.

(Then we can make a geotagged feed and map of geotagging in journalism. Then our heads might explode)

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