Imagining I was working with another journalist who’d put together a story on mining in Latin America, I set out to build an interactive map in four hours (7-11pm, February 16th, 2014.) that could accompany that piece. I wanted to see how long it would take me, on a deadline, to make this kind of thing. And I’m pretty happy with the result. With another four hours it could be ready for prime time.

The results can be explored by clicking here:

Challenges

Was this journalism? I felt for the coders and developers at ProPublica, NYTimes, Boston Globe, etc. Did they run into existential questions about whether they were actually doing journalism versus just making pretty things? Does the demand for interactivity from the Internet readership mean more resources are being diverted to building these kind of things rather than actual reporting?

Finding the right images Did I want to tell the story with aerial shots from Google Maps or on-the-ground photography? Which was best to show the immensity of these open pit mines?

What to write for the blurbs The 70 word budget I had for each interactive slide was extremely limited. What did I have to leave out?

Coding, coding, coding The javascript for this basic interactive map was not (overly) difficult, but making the thing look pretty with CSS was time-consuming. Still not happy with it.

Only made 4 of 10. My top 10 list is six short. Too much time was wasted cropping images, debugging code and researching the blurbs. Had I access to in-house resources–like a journalist’s database with the latest stats and newspegs on each mine–I’d have been golden.

Tools

Leaflet is a Javascript library whose inventor was recently hired by the folks at MapBox. It’s streamlined mapping and allows for tons of customization.