The state of the news industry, on an interactive map
By Satta Sarmah
At LoJoConnect, we’ve spent some time talking about how news organizations are using interactive maps to make public data more accessible.
But now this multimedia storytelling tool is being used by one journalist to map the slow decline of the news industry.
Any aspiring journalist or newspaper lover worried about the future of news may want to turn a blind eye to a new interactive map that charts newspaper layoffs.
The map is on a blog called Paper Cuts, which was started by Erica Smith, a graphic designer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Though 2008 isn’t even halfway over, more than 3,000 journalists have lost their jobs at U.S. newspapers, according to the blog.
The map is color-coded to show the differing magnitudes of the layoffs. For example, a white marker on the map indicates a layoff of one to 24 staff members at a particular newspaper (the Yakima-Herald Republic in Seattle, Washington and the Beaver County Times in Beaver, Pennsylvania fit this description), while a red marker on the map reflects a newspaper with more than 100 layoffs (big-name papers like the Washington Post and Newsday have had massive firings).
When users click each marker on this Google-powered map, a box pops up with the name of the newspaper, its parent company, the number of layoffs and the date these layoffs were announced. Noticeably, most of these layoffs were concentrated on the East Coast.
It’s interesting that news and non-news oriented Web sites are using mapping tools to locate and organize all sorts of information, especially news about the state of the news business. This map is a vivid representation of what journalists lament about as many of their colleagues pack up their boxes and seek work in a less volatile field.
For every journalist’s sake, let’s hope there aren’t many more color-coded markers added to this map.
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