This document discusses how geo-location can be used in news reporting and delivery. It provides examples of how The New York Times delivers different content depending on where the reader is located. It also discusses tools like FourSquare that use location data and how journalists can geotag their stories and archives so location-relevant content is surfaced. The document advocates for location-based services being used as discovery tools to see what friends and communities are reading based on their location.

1. Geo-location and News

2. I get different news reading the same article.
• The New York Times story changes
its text depending on where you’re
reading it: “It’s a fine line between
a smarter default and being
creepy.”
• The title of the story is, The Best
and Worst Places to Grow Up.
• http://www.nytimes.com/interacti
ve/2015/05/03/upshot/the-best-
and-worst-places-to-grow-up-how-
your-area-
compares.html?smid=tw-share

3. Location matters.
• 5W1H of journalism: “Where” has always been one of the
fundamental questions guiding journalists, along with who, what,
when, why and how.
• Reporters and newsrooms could geotag their stories and archives in a
coordinated way so that when someone goes to a particular place or
looks at a map of that place, she could get an aggregate of relevant,
well-researched content.
• The tools for tracking people via location data are getting better,
cheaper, and more available. One funny example is I Know Where
Your Cat Lives, which shows the locations of cat pictures found on the
public internet via the geo location included in the EXIF image data.

4. Four Square 6.0
• http://iknowwhereyourcatlives.com
• "Rethinking the location based
service as a discovery tool instead of primarily a way to see what
your friends are doing"
Foursquare: "3.5 billion
check-ins in past 4 years"

5. • Map: Finding things to
do in your area
• See what friends
around you are doing
Feed of recommendations
from friends
• Search feature
• Wall Street Journal posted
alerted followers:
"Portions of Times Square have
been Evacuated after a report of a
suspicious package.

6. Examples
• Buzzfeed used only UGC in order to report the events of the attack during the Boston Marathon.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/reports-of-an-explosion-at-boston-marathon-finish-
line#.amr7q1JG5
• Thatcher funeral: Street views of procession in tweets and pictures
• Explore the map of Baroness Thatcher's funeral procession to see tweets and photos posted by
the crowds who turned out to watch, or protest, on Wednesday. Click on the icons or on the
arrows either side of the first photo. Produced by Trushar Barot, Sitala Peek, Victoria Park,
Dominic Bailey, Harjit Kaura and Martyn Rees.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtkjXwJTtvU

7. Banjo
• Free location tracking software
• http://ban.jo/

8. • Katy Newton, a former Knight fellow, is still developing Kon*Fab, a
location-based service application that would show users what those
around them are reading. Newton hopes geo-location information
can give insight into not just relevant trends but into why some
stories linger in certain communities and not in others.