Story Review

Can a story about parking tickets be exciting? Hardly. Yet, what do you do when you are a newspaper, you know that “New York City agencies issued 9,955,441 parking tickets from July 2007 to June 2008” and you have the location for 87% of those? Not using that amount of data seems like such a waste!

Enter the New York Times’ Matthew Bloch and Amanda Cox and their interactive map of parking tickets in New York City.

Google maps mash-ups are starting to become ubiquitous, so something on that basis cannot really be seen as original in November 2008. But not many newspapers have thought about using the technology for making parking tickets into a story.

The presentation of this story is minimalist but caters to all your core needs. Basically, what you will want from an interactive map of parking tickets is to see where the most tickets are and what the situation where you live or work is. Helpful enough, hot spots are marked on the map in red (with the hottest ones across the five boroughs listed in the sidebar), and there is a search field where you can search for an address. After spending some time exploring, this reviewer also wanted to check which blocks had the fewest tickets, but could not. However, most users are unlikely to be after that level of detail.

On a slow news day, this is a great way to bring some community information to the community. (Mind you, we are not sure if November 26 was a slow news day.)

The thing you’ve got to love about this map is that it allows any user to create their own story by interacting with it. Those may not be the most thrilling stories where the broader audience is concerned, but to the individual user they matter. If you wonder why, just go to Google Maps and find your own house. You see?

VERDICT

Originality: 4 (out of 5)

It seems like one of those ideas anyone could have had. Only no one else had them.

Presentation: 4 (out of 5)

Simple and straightforward, caters to the audience’s most basic needs.

Journalistic value: 3 (out of 5)

Everyone can create their very personal story.

Overall: 3.8 (out of 5)

Impressive.

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Thanks to Alison Gow’s Headlines and Deadlines blog for linking to the interactive graphic.

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