In writing, 'showing' always trumps 'telling.'
Whether we're talking factless works of fiction or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism, a writer needs to illustrate the story. And in this digital age of multi-channel storytelling, it's important for every online news organization to show their stories in as many ways as possible. This is at the heart of my love affair with Google Maps. Especially when we're talking about local journalism. People like to see where the news around them is happening. It's also great for filling out space on breaking news stories that may not have much more information than a location yet available.
In about a minute (seriously, it's not that difficult), you can add an interactive map to any online story and
show your "where."
Google an address, grab the embed code, paste it into your web-publisher, voila.
We've been taking advantage of this at NewHavenRegister.com quite a bit recently. Every time I catch a story that has a location I can pinpoint on a map, I add it to the story. That is of course, if it makes sense to show the location. For example, if you are working on a story about a man who was arrested for stealing a vanilla ice cream cone from a kid - you want to show where this crime occurred on a map. But if the only "where" info you have is the man's address -- as some blotter stories do -- there is often little reason to map that. Don't map just to map. Map information that has context in the story you're telling.
Here are some examples of how I've used it:
And here is more advanced use with multiple locations and areas:
How do you make and embed your own Google Map? Let's walk through it step by step:
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