Oct 14, 2008

Just because you have a tool, doesn’t mean you have to always use it

Tim Windsor , , , , Uncategorized 3 Comments

I like what two Liverpool newspapers are doing: geotagging certain news stories and plotting them on a map.

But I like what they’re not doing even better: tagging every single story.

“We don’t use them for everything; there would be no point in geotagging Liverpool town hall for every council story, for example. But for location-specific articles they work really well.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the “everything would be geotagged to City Hall” argument against location metadata. Well, there you have it: just don’t tag those stories.

If the location metadata adds to the story, use it. If it adds unnecessary complexity, don’t

The map is here, though it seemed to be struggling with load when I checked last.

3 Comments

  1. Gus
    Oct 23, 2008 @ 21:25:19

    I pitched the idea of plotting all of our daily news photos (and video) in an online map, so people could see all the great work our photographers do, and where they do it. It doesn't make sense to geotag all stories, because some occur in mundane places (i.e. city hall) or are stories about issues.

    But every photo is taken someplace on this earth. I've always thought we should have an interactive map that shows the work of our professional staff photographers, and maybe even maps photos taken by readers (and highlights them differently, to set them apart from staff work.) It could be updated data and automatically — our photographers note the address of every photo assignment. The data is there to be manipulated. Just gotta build the app.

    Interestingly, we've geocoded our stories to maps in our redesigned PRINT edition, which, um, is not interactive. But anyway….. :-)

  2. Gus
    Oct 23, 2008 @ 22:25:19

    I pitched the idea of plotting all of our daily news photos (and video) in an online map, so people could see all the great work our photographers do, and where they do it. It doesn't make sense to geotag all stories, because some occur in mundane places (i.e. city hall) or are stories about issues.

    But every photo is taken someplace on this earth. I've always thought we should have an interactive map that shows the work of our professional staff photographers, and maybe even maps photos taken by readers (and highlights them differently, to set them apart from staff work.) It could be updated data and automatically — our photographers note the address of every photo assignment. The data is there to be manipulated. Just gotta build the app.

    Interestingly, we've geocoded our stories to maps in our redesigned PRINT edition, which, um, is not interactive. But anyway….. :-)

  3. Gus
    Oct 24, 2008 @ 03:25:19

    I pitched the idea of plotting all of our daily news photos (and video) in an online map, so people could see all the great work our photographers do, and where they do it. It doesn't make sense to geotag all stories, because some occur in mundane places (i.e. city hall) or are stories about issues.

    But every photo is taken someplace on this earth. I've always thought we should have an interactive map that shows the work of our professional staff photographers, and maybe even maps photos taken by readers (and highlights them differently, to set them apart from staff work.) It could be updated data and automatically — our photographers note the address of every photo assignment. The data is there to be manipulated. Just gotta build the app.

    Interestingly, we've geocoded our stories to maps in our redesigned PRINT edition, which, um, is not interactive. But anyway….. :-)