Map Skills test

View Lancashire Evening Post: 20th October News Stories in a larger map

Above is a Google map showing the locations of four Lancashire Evening Post news stories on Thursday 20th October 2011. 


I chose the stories I did as their geo-locations were specific to locate on the map to make it clear to readers where exactly the event/incident happened. This is important as it gives people who live in Lancashire an idea of where news is most frequent and where it is not. As you can see from my map, three out of the four news stories I chose to geo-locate are located in and around Preston city centre. I also chose these stories as their topics are all important issues and are different to one another. Below is an explanation of each pin on the map and why I chose that story: 


Yellow pin: I chose the 'CCTV appeal for supermarket thief' story as unlike the others, the story is geographically quite distant, being located in Lancaster rather than Preston. I also chose it for it's tone - it's not a soft news story but at the same time, it's not as hard a news story as say a murder investigation. I wanted to ensure that the tones of each of my four stories differed as well as the topic. 


Red pin: I chose the 'Schoolboy suffers minor injuries after crash' story as not only is it an emotive human interest story, but it also combines the education topic. A point is made in the story as to the boy's educational background at Fulwood Academy. I also chose it for it's tone. It is a hard and serious news story but the outcome was positive as the boy luckily only suffered minor injuries including bruises.


Pink pin: I chose the 'Preston nursery running Halloween fundraiser' story as it is an upbeat, positive news story but at the same time has been published for a serious reason - to raise awareness and funds for the LEP Lifesaver Appeal. 


Blue pins: As explained in the information of the blue pins, I geo-located both the hit-and-run location and the address of the hit-and-run killer as although the news story is about the killer himself appealing for a reduced sentence, I thought it important to contextualise the story and pin point the location of the hit-and-run, as without this previous news story, this 20th October news story wouldn't exist. I decided to draw a blue shape around both of these blue pins to highlight that this is one ongoing continuous story. 


This exercise has been beneficial to my Journalism skills as I now have a new and alternative way to present a news story as opposed to the conventional text story. 

This post was written by Stacey Ford. You can contact Stacey at: SFord1@uclan.ac.uk