How a Journalist and Technologist Collaborated to Improve Maps for News

By: 03/11/2013

In the current news environment, journalists and developers are increasingly calling upon and benefiting from one another's skills and expertise.

The nearly one-year-old InfoAmazonia is a product of such a partnership–and a testament to the power of collaboration. Led by Knight International Journalism Fellow Gustavo Faleiros, InfoAmazonia presents environmental news and maps of open data in Portuguese, Spanish and English from the nine-country Amazon region.

The Washington-based company MapBox built the developer tools for the InfoAmazonia site. During InfoAmazonia’s development, MapBox provided site strategy, Web design and cartography, as well as training for journalists in Brazil on how to use the site’s tools.

IJNet talked with Faleiros and MapBox senior developer Alex Barth to find out how their collaboration improved the work of both.

Read the interview on IJNet.

News Category

Blog Post

Topics

Media Innovation

Investigative Journalism

Critical-Issues Reporting

Media Innovation

Latest News

A Reporter's Guide to The History of Tariffs

This piece was produced in collaboration with the Global Business Journalism program at Tsinghua University. The program is a partnership between ICFJ, Tsinghua University and Bloomberg News.

For most of human history, governments have taxed goods crossing their borders. Tariffs — taxes levied on imports or exports — have financed

Hans Staiger Award Winner Investigates Russian Soldiers Secretly Treated in Belarus Hospitals, Including Those Linked to War Crimes

Leaked data from the Russian Defense Ministry shook the story loose. A team of investigators found that during the first 21 months of the invasion of Ukraine, nearly 1,000 Russian soldiers were treated at Belarusian hospitals, including war crime suspects. These “secret patients,” as they were known, directly tied Belarus to Moscow’s war effort.

I Blew Up on TikTok with Journalism — Here's How You Can, Too

l'll never forget the day when an editor at the BBC told a 25-year-old me that journalists shouldn’t be on TikTok because “there’s so much misinformation on there.” By that point, I had maybe 10,000 followers on the platform, possibly more, and the comment stung. My TikToks, which had amplified my journalism as well as my passion for learning new languages, were well researched and I hoped the direct opposite of misinformation.