E-Media Tidbits

Google Earth When you click on a NY Times story icon in Google Earth, you get a headline, summary, and story link.

Google's LatLong blog explains how it works: "Launch the latest version of Google Earth and make sure the 'Geographic Web' folder is turned on. Click on a New York Times placemark and you will see the latest news and features pertaining to that geographic region. Want to see more than just headlines? Click on the 'Show this layer' button at the top of the preview bubble and you'll get a list of news articles dating back one month. ...This layer is updated every 15 minutes to offer the latest headlines."

Leslie Rule, director of the Center for Locative Media, noted recently in the PBS Idealab blog, "You can now browse New York Times news based on geography. Has the New York Times become hyperlocal, even though the content may not have that perspective?"

In this video, Rule explains the process of creating a viewing a news layer in Google Earth.

According to Rule, "This requires no programming skills. Any news organization can do it. Journalists should be training on and using these tools. It would take one eight-hour day to teach 10 journalists to create something akin to what you have just seen."

Why bother with Google Earth? Because it's amazingly popular. As of February 2008 this program had 350 million users worldwide. Also, the Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files that you use to layer information in Google Earth also can be displayed in a Web or mobile format via Google Maps.

If creating Google Earth layers is so easy, why aren't more news orgs doing it?

First, your news must be geocoded -- ideally in more detail than a simple dateline reference allows. Most content management systems can be configured to support this feature. If your CMS doesn't have that feature turned on, ask your IT staff and editors to implement it. Explain that it'll make your news more friendly to emerging geo-based search platforms. (Read: More traffic.)

But Rule's post reveals a more stubborn barrier preventing intrepid journalists from venturing into interactive mapping, which she discovered at a recent Knight Digital Media Center seminar:

"One participant from a medium-sized paper in New York State took me up on my offer to walk her through the process. She thought it was cool and wanted to bring it into her newsroom. We soon hit the wall: systemic infrastructure issues like only administrators can add applications (standard operating procedure, that's why you need a laptop); firewalls keep links/e-mails out; older machines can't speedily process server-based apps. Old media entrenched."

This anecdote makes me think that in many cases, journalists operating independently outside the newsroom might be able to accomplish more with new tools such as Google Earth using their own laptops, broadband, and time than would be possible for news orgs bogged down in technological and bureaucratic inertia.

Such independent learning might be just what's needed to improve a journalist's career options in an age when news orgs are hemorrhaging jobs faster than ever.

If you're intrigued by Google Earth, I've written a piece for the Apr. 16 Society of Environmental Journalists Tipsheet (due out shortly, it'll be posted here) that offers more examples and ways to get started.