Nieman Foundation at Harvard
HOME
          
LATEST STORY
The media becomes an activist for democracy
ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
Nov. 3, 2008, 12:19 p.m.

Mapping the news

Two interesting (and still in beta) mapping applications present the news in new ways:

— The downright quantum TimeSpace from The Washington Post, which “allows users to navigate through hundreds of photos, video, articles, tweets, posts and audio related to the national election from around the country.” (Further evidence that “tweet” may be penetrating farther into the language than I’d have imagined.)

— The Seattle Times’ Mapping the News, which features an ever-shifting globe showing what seem to be randomly pulled news stories tied to specific places. (There’s also a slightly more traditional local edition for Seattle-area stories.)

I don’t know if a geographic interface will ever be the main way anyway takes in the news, but it’s good to see some fresh experiments.

Joshua Benton is the senior writer and former director of Nieman Lab. You can reach him via email (joshua_benton@harvard.edu) or Twitter DM (@jbenton).
POSTED     Nov. 3, 2008, 12:19 p.m.
Show tags
 
Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email.
The media becomes an activist for democracy
“We cannot be neutral about this, by definition. A free press that doesn’t agitate for democracy is an oxymoron.”
Embracing influencers as allies
“News organizations will increasingly rely on digital creators not just as amplifiers but as integral partners in storytelling.”
Action over analysis
“We’ve overindexed on problem articulation, to the point of problem admiring. The risk is that we are analyzing ourselves into inaction and irrelevance.”