How Journalists Use Google Maps for Reporting

Robert Niles speaks to reporters who leveraged Google Maps to report on the California wildfires:

“The [Los Angeles] Times’ Ron Lin developed the initial version of the fire map, using his personal Google account. Lin said that he “had played around” with building Google Maps before and credited the tool’s ease of use in helping him build a map on deadline.”

“It doesn’t take much technical expertise to create a map through Google’s site and share it,” wrote Phil Malavenda, Online Operations/Production Manager for SignOnSanDiego.com, in an e-mail to OJR. “You just have to put points/areas on the map and make it public. It did take some programming expertise to host the map on our site like we did.”

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