View of Hataitai, Wellington. Picture: Peter from Wellington (Flickr)
Howdy!
This, I hope, will be a very exciting project. Not only for Whitireia students, but also as a journalism experiment for everyone out there.
Small crimes, bigger problem
Let me explain. A few years ago, back in the UK, the local police introduced a Neighbourhood Watch map. It showed the local town, divided up into tiny segments. Each segment consisted of a few streets, and was labeled with the details of who we could contact if an incident occurred in each little section. One person whose sole goal was to represent the people living in that small area. Hyperlocal policing.
Of course, hyperlocal is a word we journalists should be getting used to. It is a goal we should be aiming for within our news websites. After all, every news story is hyperlocal… you just need to live in the right place.
The effect of the Neighbourhood Watch hyperlocal scheme was huge. Suddenly, local residents who were a victim of petty crime felt they had somewhere to go. By emailing their local rep, they felt like they were reporting the problem without bothering the ‘real’ police — the investigators and coppers in the town centre.
What they didn’t realise, of course, is that their little problems translated to a major problem in the bigger picture. If you get your car window smashed, is it a big issue? No, probably not. But if, by reporting it to your local rep, you found that people all over town were having their car windows smashed in the same way, all of a sudden there’s a big crime problem.
Small stories, bigger issue
How does this involve journalism? Simple: we’ll apply the same strategy to news gathering. At Whitireia, we’ve assigned each journalism student — there are 27 of them in total — to a very precise area of Wellington (plus some bigger patches for the surrounding areas). We are going to promote our ‘news map’ to local people, under the branding of ‘Who is YOUR journalist?’. Just like the Neighbourhood Watch, we need to give off the impression we want to hear everything that’s going on; no matter how small or insignificant it may be. There are thousands of stories sat out there, but the residents don’t think they’re important enough to bother the busy journos at the Dominion Post.
So, instead, they’ll come to our students.
Anyway, this news map will feature highly in the new news website I am developing for Whitireia. For this, I have added all the data we have — so far — to a Google map, below.
By zooming in, you can see how each section of Wellington is divided up. Click on each slice, and you’ll find the name of the reporter in charge, and a telephone number to get in touch.
As I recently discovered, those bubbles allow me to put HTML code in, so that opens up a whole wealth of options for local news coverage.
Magical map of marvellous minisites
So the plan is thus: fill each segment with news relating its geographical position. Make each slice of map its own minisite. This won’t be a problem. An RSS feed will be generated by the main news site — powered by Wordpress — and fed directly into each bubble. And, er, that’s it. Simple coding, simple concept… but I think it’s a powerful one that all our local newspapers should adopt.
But that’s not all. In time I will be feeding reporter’s Twitter feeds into that bubble too, allowing visitors to see what they’re working on. One student here is doing a story about bicycle accidents in Hutt. If she was to Twitter the message “researching bike accidents in Hutt, any experiences?”, people could immediately get in touch.
And then…?
Well what next? Google Maps is a platform I’m only just learning about. In time, perhaps, all our news stories can be tagged to certain locations. So, for example, any stories about a school could appear as a bubble in that school’s location… perhaps. But then perhaps it should be kept as simple as possible — we don’t want to drive away the people who would be the source of stories.
Over to you, guys. I’m very interested to hear what you have to suggest. Is this a good idea? What else should we be trying? What can I add?
Hi Dave, have an eye on Google Maps working with a database.
So you could have people filling out a form that can be sliced into the map – you could plot bike accidents in Hutt or ask readers where problem areas are.
Here’s how I hooked up a Google Map with Calendar to get a simple What’s On up and running:
http://www.craigmcginty.com/news/2008/01/a-whats-on-cale.html
Again you could use a form for this to ask readers to send in info, cast an eye over it and then map it.
Any questions just shout.
Craig
This is a terrific idea – I’ll be watching your progress with interest.
There are (on the surface) some similarities with what the journalism students at the University of Windesheim at Zwolle (Netherlands) do in their practice – where they set up community based newsrooms producting online output. I’ll be spending my research time this summer looking at this and the practice of community or civic journalism – with the aim of applying the same to our community radio journalism here in Lincoln.
I can see that I’m going to find many of your ideas extremely useful and will adopt where I can – making sure I credit you and Whitireia when I do!
Debbie
I think it’s a great idea. It’s not easy to draw the line between ‘advertising’ a community event and encouraging people in that community to participate. That’s the line that mainstream media draw all the time and putting a news angle on an event often sticks the sharp bit into the purpose of the event.
Stick one of Craig’s bubbles on Lyall Bay for this Saturday at 8:30 am when the Crazy Druid surfers go for their solstice swim (and while you are there, care for the coast).
This sounds great. Besides the slices separation in Google maps you can use a Wordpress plugin for geotagging, where you can put down a location on the map for each article straight from your post and they will all show up with a certain tag on a Gmap. Also, the map will link back to the articles, as you can have a separate layer on Gmaps.
I very recently got hold of a very cool CBR but had a small misfortune! I tried to brake slowly and consistently with the forward brakes but the wheel almost instantly fell out under me! I have often been on the back of a bike with somebody else before who has even brought the rear bike up into the air by braking hard with the front brake! How did he do it that it works better? Im dumbstruck!