Tag Archives: Mapping

Lloyd’s List maps anti-piracy campaign

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.

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

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)

Your chance to vote in the American election without citizenship

We could hardly resist putting this pretty map up here, and the motive behind its design makes it even better. The reason is arrived in our inboxes today is because the Economist is inviting the world to vote in the American presidential election in its Global Electoral College (GEC) – we can dream that it would have an impact, at least.

Now, this isn’t some kind of ‘let’s influence the silly Americans’ à la the Guardian’s G2 2004, but a rather nice re-drawing of the electoral map. In the new version 195 of the world’s countries get a say in the outcome of the next presidential election.

“America’s presidential campaign has fascinated people around the world, the Economist.com’s editor, Daniel Franklin said In the release accompanying the map. “Maddeningly, though, only Americans get to vote. But what if the entire world had a say?”

Although based on the American system, it aims to put pay to the significance of the swing vote (‘there are few countries whose votes in the GEC are a foregone conclusion’). The vote closes November 2 2008 when the results will be announced live in New York.

Online, users can look at the world map to see how each of candidates is doing on a global, and country-by-country basis, and find links to the Economist’s election analysis. Right now it’s looking pretty good for Obama. For starters he has 94 per cent of votes in India, 88 per cent of votes in Britain, and 86 per cent support him in China.

It gets more complicated than this, so visit the website for more details.

Journalism.co.uk creates maps for freelance journalists

Want to put yourself on the map as a journalist? Sign up to Journalism.co.uk’s freelance directory and you will be.

Thanks to two new maps created by Journalism.co.uk, potential employers and commissioners can track down freelance journalists and photographers wherever they are in the world.

Freelancers will also be able to see who else is working in their region, giving them the chance to build new contacts and colleagues.

Both maps can be searched by a specific location or postcode.

Clicking on a pin in the map will open up a freelancers name and a link to their directory listing. Areas where there’s a high concentration of freelancers are marked with green ‘cluster’ arrows.

To feature on the maps you will need to be a paid-up member of Journalism.co.uk’s freelance directory. Only basic address details, and if possible a postcode, need to be provided.

BBC tracks shipping container in multimedia news experiment

The BBC’s business and economics unit has embarked on a new multimedia editorial project aimed at improving the storytelling of economic news.

The Box initiative is an attempt to ‘come up with a way of telling the real story of what’s happening in the global economy in a tangible, challenging and ambitious way’ across multiple BBC platforms, Jeremy Hillman, editor of the business and economics unit, writes on the BBC Editors Blog.

The box of the title refers to a BBC-branded shipping container equipped with a GPS transmitter, which will have its international journey tracked, updated and mapped on its own webpage.

“The journey this container follows over the next few months will be a real one, and whilst we will control some aspects of the process for logistical reasons, the story it tells will be a truly representative one, painting a picture of what globalisation really means,” writes Hillman.

The container began its journey in Southampton yesterday.

Hillman adds: “Whilst we have paid a little for the branding of the box and some technical costs, the fact this is a working container means it will be earning its own keep!”

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Bergens Tidende asks users to map traffic hotspots

“Bergens Tidende, our local paper, has a shining example today of how a local newspaper can gather and report local news simultaneously by coordinating reader participation in a very easy-to-contribute mashup focusing on an issue of huge importance to Bergeners right now, though it’s of absolutely no wider interest”, writes Jill Walker Rettberg, an associate professor at the University of Bergen, on her blog.

That issue is traffic: Bergen, a city on the west coast of Norway, is currently building a light rail system through Bergen, and the road works and constantly changing detours are causing major traffic problems.

“We decided to do something different to report on the exasperating traffic situation in the city, ” Jan Stian Vold of Bt.no told me.

What the news site came up with, in addition to their normal coverage, was a Google Map where readers could plot in where they encountered traffic problems.

It asked its readers: ‘Where are the bottlenecks in the Bergen-traffic? How does the construction of the light rail system effect you?’

Walker Rettberg is also rather impressed by the anti-spam measures: “You enter your mobile phone number and instantly receive an SMS with a code that you then type into the website to confirm that you’re an actual person and that you’re a different person to all the other people who’ve entered their comments,” she writes.

This works as an efficient way of identifying people as all mobile phone numbers are registered by law in Norway.

Requiring users to register does raise the threshold for participation, but this has not deterred Bergeners, as around 400 people have reported their traffic problems so far, according to Vold.

Hurricane Gustav hits online media

Hurricane Gustav, which according to Breaking News Twitter reached the coast of Louisiana at 11.19am (BST) today, is being avidly blogged, twittered and mapped by US news organisations online.

The Houston Chronicle has set up a special section of its site – Hurricane Central – to cover the storm, featuring live radar maps of its progress, forecasts of the storm’s path and related news stories.

The Chronicle has also created a guide for readers on how to prepare for the hurricane when it hits.

Kansas City’s KCTV5.com is mapping Gustav with its interactive Hurricane Tracker, which allows users to compare and contrast past storms in the US.

KCTV5 is also streaming live footage from cameras located on the US coast.

Elsewhere intern with the Knox News Sentinel, Willow Nero, is blogging from New Orleans’ airport as she tries to catch a flight to Paris (thanks to Jack Lail for the tip);

A quick search for New Orleans on Twitter Local shows a wealth of residents using the microblogging service to update on their evacuation or as they sit out the storm. Play a great choice of slots, video poker, and casino games at the well-established FavBet Casino. https://favbet-casino.in/app/ Claim regular bonuses and a variety of loyalty rewards.

Mark Mayhew, twittering from 932 Bourbon St, New Orleans, is using the service to update followers from the ground:

Weberence has created a round-up of twitterers affected by the hurricane giving a highly personalised account of the storm; while a Twitter account set up as the American Red Cross is giving followers up-to-the-minute details of evacuation procedures and safety information.

Are online maps ‘whitewashing’ the UK? Not in the hands of the news providers

Online maps are erasing the UK’s history and geography, according to the president of the British Cartographic Society.

Quoted in a BBC report, Mary Spence said internet maps, such as those provided by Google and Microsoft’s Multimap, are missing out ‘crucial data’ on local landmarks and history.

It’s not all bad news online, however: mash ups like the Open Street Map are leading the retaliation against this ‘corporate blankwash’, Spence says.

The rising popularity of interactive maps amongst news organisations – whether its the Hartlepool Mail’s Plot the Grots and Plot the Pots campaigns or the BBC’s recent Beijing Olympics map – could be the next step in the fightback.

First off, they serve up information to the reader in a digestible and filterable way. What is more, while these examples might not highlight cultural hotspots, they endow the humble online map with a living and breathing sense of the geography they chart.

With the potential to personalise the data plotted on these maps to a street-by-street level – as Adrian Holovaty’s Everyblock project allows – internet mapping in the hands of news organisations should only get richer.

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Berlingske Tidende – using crime maps for journalism

As the UK government announces plans for crime maps for offences in England and Wales, Kristine Lowe reports for Journalism.co.uk on how Danish paper Berlingske Tidende is using its own map as a source of news and a public service.

“Crime mapping is getting government push behind it, even if police are resisting,” wrote the Guardian’s technology editor Charles Arthur this week, as the government announced plans to publish local interactive crime maps for every area in England and Wales by Christmas.

In Denmark the national daily Berlingske Tidende is already pioneering the use of crime maps as part of the newsgathering process.

With the help of its readers, the paper has created an interactive crime map detailing how well the police responds to calls from the public.

“We have just had a major police reform here in Denmark and decided to investigate how this has worked. The politicians promised more police on the streets and more money to solve crime. We thought the best way to check the reality of these promises was to get our readers to tell us about their experiences,” Christian Jensen, editor-in-chief of Berlingske, told Journalism.co.uk.

The reader reports are placed on a Google map of the country and, since its launch in May, 70 crimes have been reported and plotted.

One of the crimes reported to the map related to the alleged murder of Danish woman Pia Rönnei.

Despite available patrols in the area, the police force did not send officers to investigate calls from neighbours, who reported screams and loud bangs from an apartment that Rönnei was in – something it has been forced to apologise for after the publicity the story received.

“In classic journalism, it is the journalists who find the stories. In our new media reality, it can just as well be the readers who alert us to issues they are concerned about,” said Jensen.

The newspaper has had two full-time reporters devoted to the project, and used an online journalist, photographer and production company (for live pictures) in stories they have devoted additional space to.

“We encourage people to get in touch with stories both in our paper edition and online, as we see a substantial increase in web traffic when we draw attention to the project in the paper edition,” Jensen explained.

Every single crime report on the map generates the same amount of web traffic as breaking news, he added.

The project has been so successful that the newspaper is preparing to launch another project in the same vein. In the next few days Berlingske will unveil a database on immigration politics, where readers can tell their own stories and read and comment on each others’ accounts of their experiences with immigration authorities.

But the biggest challenge for the paper has been verification:

“That is what makes this complicated. Our journalists read through all the reports to check their credibility, but we do not have the resources to verify every single detail. That has made it even more important to clarify from the outset that we are only reporting what the readers have told us.”