Using Google maps to make council stories more interesting

Reporting on local councils can be a dry business, propping open your eyes and sinking yet another coffee during an Economic & Culture Scrutiny Committee is not the most exciting part of being a reporter – but it’s necessary. Journalists need to be holding local council’s to account and being at planning, licensing and other meetings is part of the job.

However, the stories about a new block of flats or a new air quality management area aren’t always the most exciting. So, how do you spice them up a little? The web allows us to quickly and easily add maps into our stories to give a sense of scale for readers.

Recently Cardiff Council declared a section of a busy road running through the city as an ‘Air Quality Management Area’. This means that the levels of toxic fumes are above the recommended amount. However, this road is a large one and trying to describe the exact area is difficult. Buried away in the documents is a map of the area, but it’s not got local landmarks on it to help people make sense of it.

Embedded below is a quick google map I added to the story to show the area and also the amount of people who live in the affected area. It localises the story, humanises it and adds context. Plus it will hold the attention of the reader on the story page for longer.

View Stephenson Court Air Quality Management Area in a larger map

How to make a google map and embed in your story

1. First of all get hold of the document from the Council, be it the planning application or scrutiny committee report. Find the map. Get it clear in your head where this area is, and if you’re not sure check the boundaries of the area. There’s nothing worse than an incorrect map.

2. Sign up for a Google account. Easy to do, once you have a Google account you can then use their Google map software.

3. Click on Maps in the Google top bar, and then click My Maps. Hit ‘Create new map’ and give it a title e.g. Newport Road Air Quality Management Area and write a short description.

4. You can then create points on the map, markers, and shaded areas or draw lines. The image above shows what’s available to you when creating the map. Think about the best way to display the information you’ve got, if it’s a series of locations you’ll want to use markets. If it’s a new traffic route, you’ll want to draw lines. If it involves zones or areas you’ll want to create shaded areas. Some maps may use all of those tools, for example the Air Quality Management Area includes a shaded area and markers.

5. When adding areas/markets make sure you include a title for each of them and some added information e.g. don’t just put ‘Marker 1′ make sure it says ‘High Cross’ and in the description ‘High Cross will be the main terminal for the new bus station’.

6. Once you’ve added all the information, click the ‘Link’ option and you’ll then be able to get an embed code. This allows you to put the map into your story, so people can see the map while reading the story. When you click the ‘Link’ option you’ll see two bits of code and an option to say ‘Customise’, click this and a screen will pop-up and allow you to edit the size of your map. Plus very importantly where it is centered and the amount of zoom. For council stories the zoom in on maps is likely to be very high, as they relate to a specific area – there’s no point showing the whole of the UK in a google map that’s about a street in Nottingham.

7. Get the code and embed it into the HTML part of your content management system. You may need to ask your technical team for the best way to embed Google Maps, you may need to request it is ‘white listed’ as a widget, or you may be able to access the HTML code for stories. Either way, check with them the best way. Make sure the map is the width of the story – just as if you were putting a photo in. Also, include a title above your map so that if it doesn’t display – people at least understand it’s there. Something like ‘View a map of the new traffic layout for Reading’ and make the ‘view a map’ a link to the Google map itself (you can grab a http://www…. link to the actual map by clicking that ‘Link’ button in the Google map options).

There you go, you’ve added a Google map to your story and helped put it into context for your readers. It’s also a timeless piece of content, so you can re-embed it if you run a similar  or follow-up story.

Here’s some other examples of maps being used in local reporting to good effect: YourPonty does a good planning application round-up map and Blog Preston used a map to show the location of old railway tunnels that run under the city.

Do you use Google Maps as part of your reporting? Got some examples of excellent Google Maps that you’ve seen on news websites? Let me know in the comments below.

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