Locative tech helps show tornado damage in Virginia
By Hilary Powell
Savage winds are common in the twister-prone prairies of the Central U.S., but, on Monday, southeastern Virginia was pummeled with an unexpected series of tornadoes.
In their coverage of the rare event, a number of news outlets used maps to help readers grasp the depth of the destruction.
But some industry watchers wondered why the use of location-based technology wasn’t more widespread and/or sophisticated.
The issue was brought to the team’s attention by a Roosevelt University professor in Chicago who recently took our survey on how locative technology is being used in newsrooms.
He was hoping to find even a simple, non-interactive map showing where the tornadoes hit in Virginia, but both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune disappointed him, he wrote to me in an e-mail.
So I went looking for stories that used maps to explain what happened.
A Google search for ‘Virginia AND map’ resulted in a trickle of stories accompanied by a map, including one from The Examiner online. It used a basic Google Map, with a bullet point focused on Suffolk, a city where emergency crews were deployed after the storm. But besides clicking the dot — revealing the longitude and latitude of the location — there was not much interactivity involved.
The Virginian-Pilot’s online map of the area is a step up in terms of locative technology. The Pilot’s map zooms in on the Suffolk area and provides a tool that allows viewers to plot and enter small blurbs about their own “storm stories.” I wish those stories had added some pictures and maybe even home footage. If the map is going to be labeled “interactive,” let’s not skimp on the possibilities of that term. Still, the map key helps to break down details on road closures and major damage. It’s a strong example of using maps to localize a story.
Finally, after much online searching, CNN.com gave me the Flash fix I needed to better understand how the storms devastated specific locations.
These are just a few examples of how news outlets are using available locative technology to tell stories in interesting, forward-thinking ways, and they will help us determine where to go next.
Actions: Trackback URL for this entry Commentfeed
Leave a comment