The Newsies and their maps

The News. Some people avoid it like the plague, but how can you really avoid a disease that killed one third of the population? The news is often presented in four popular media. TV, Print (newspaper), Radio, and Internet. I want to look at why any news firm would use maps, and then explore what that does to the public.

What is news?

I'll start with Radio. I looked into NPR, or the National Public Radio. Radio news is not a visual medium. Radio news programs use audio to send their message to their viewers. Radio can not use maps to relate data to it's populous.

TV is the ultimate visual medium. TV uses video clips, maps, pictures, interviews and loads of other visual tewture to reveal their message. TV news can be national such as CNN or local news such as News Chanel Eight both use maps to an extent. They may present an issue such as Yucca mountain, the news station provided a map of the transportation routes waste trucks and trains would use to get to yucca mountain. This map helps the veiwers better understand the issue at hand, presently the news stated the issue as being 55% of the waste going through populated places. Without the map people may not understand the issue to its fullest extent. The map helps bring the message home, and tells the veiwers to think, "this is bad, those trucks go by my house." The other types of maps you may happen to see are weather maps. Every news broadcast you see there will be a weather map, an isobar map, a precipitation map, a fronted map. All these maps help Show the people what is happening with the weather.

A third way news is made public is through the newspaper. The local newspaper, the Reno Gazette Journal is more visually based than TV. TV uses a plethera of visuals, but it also uses audio to promote its messege. But newspaper, newspaper is purley visiual. This would make you think that there would be maps all over newspapers, but in truth there are not as many as I would want. There are maps in newspapers, but I find there is a similar amount of cartographic production in newprint as on television. There is a weather map on every newspaper you pick up, from a local paper to a national paper, there is always a weather map.

Internet new sources are everywhere. All of the previous mediums have internet access news and there are other news sites that do not have a radio program, a TV show, or a newspaper, they are just online.

One other topic I wish to touch on before I conclude is the accuracy of newsmatic maps. Newspaper maps may be out of date by the time it's published, TV maps are probably accurate for the most part. I believe that maps in the news are simply to promote the initial topic the map is relevant too. This is a little different than looking at an atlas or the geological survey, where the map shows you all the data you could ever want to know. Maps in the news are not there to stand on their own, if they were to be viewed soley, they would mean nothing to any body, but because they are attached to the story, they help the audience better grasp what they are reading or hearing.

Maps in the news will never be great maps, but I think it's good they are represented in news to help visual people (such as myself) to better understand the possiblity of boring news.

Links:
http://news.rgj.com/
http://www.kolotv.com/
http://www.npr.org/
http://www.cnn.com/