Comments on: 5 things you can do to improve news graphics now

By: Teaching Online Journalism » Top Tojou blog posts of 2007

Teaching Online Journalism » Top Tojou blog posts of 2007 — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:48:09 +0000

[...] 5 things you can do to improve news graphics now [...]

By: Mindy McAdams

Mindy McAdams — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 13:23:36 +0000

Great comment, Melissa — I’m going to read your post now.

By: Melissa Worden

Melissa Worden — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 05:04:37 +0000

Mindy -- great post. I also was venting frustrations about this the other day after experimenting with interactive graphics on my paper's site (heraldtribune.com).

Amazingly, a couple hours of work turning a 2D graphic into an interactive map generated a lot of page views. It was easy to do, but definitely a duplication of effort. Having the print graphics department produce these would be the best solution.

But the small graphics department is already swamped keeping up with the print demands. So anything they do for the Web has to be second priority, and only if they have time (which they never do). I don't think our situation is unique.

Matt's suggestion of publishing for the Web first makes perfect sense and this is an obvious area for newspapers to start with reverse publishing.

By: Matt Waite

Matt Waite — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 01:21:33 +0000

At the time, they were the most recent available. This is analysis that I do myself, using GIS to aggregate individual sales records into neighborhoods across the Tampa Bay region. So, is it dynamic? Sadly, no. It’s using a product called HTML Imagemapper, which is an extension to the GIS software I use (ArcGIS). It turns a map into a series of tiled jpegs and imagemaps those jpegs, linking to static HTML files that come from the database. Could I update it every quarter? Sure, but if that were the plan, some other means of getting it online would be a wiser move. HTML Imagemapper works great for one off, simple things. But the time spent putting together the data, and the maps, and the presentation online, it all starts to add up. If you were to do this regularly, it would be worth the investment to get the tools to do it dynamically.

By: Mindy McAdams

Mindy McAdams — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 21:49:16 +0000

Matt: So the map refers only to the price change from 2nd quarter 2006 to 3rd quarter 2006? Are those the most recent figures available? Is this graphic dynamic? Can you update it every quarter.

I LOVE the idea of this map!

By: Matt Waite

Matt Waite — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 21:13:04 +0000

Here’s the URL to the package:

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/webspecials06/home-prices/index.shtml

By: Mindy McAdams

Mindy McAdams — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 21:00:26 +0000

Meranda, I agree with you 100 percent. The page refers are ridiculous online.

Matt, that is a fantastic example! I want the link!

By: Matt Waite

Matt Waite — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 19:33:54 +0000

A humble suggestion for a sixth? Print graphics often are built around the idea of highlighting the X number of examples we can fit into a graphic of Y size.

With the web, that limitation goes away. Web graphics should be born of the idea that we can give readers all the data, and they can pick what they want to highlight. It's much easier to go from an interactive graphic that gives a reader everything to a traditional static graphic that highlights a few things than the other way around.

And, to your point, an interactive map I did of home prices by neighborhood got more page views than the story I did on the day the two pieces ran, and the map is *still* getting traffic now two months after it ran. Story? Long forgotten.

By: Meranda

Meranda — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 17:59:51 +0000

I do understand that not every graphic can be or need be adapted for Web. But that particular graphic seemed to be an especially good example of what you shouldn't do. It didn't need to be Flash, but it should have been thought out.

Personally, the story itself was your standard weather story. It's Ohio. It's cold. Big deal. I was far more interested in the information in the graphic. But how many people actually take the time to open the story and then click again to open the graphic? There wasn't even a preview to tell me what I would find.

And the page refers in the graphic do nothing for me. If I want to know more, I have to go search for those items on my own because they provided no links. Doesn't the saying go, "Don't make me think"?