Knight helps us advance map based storytelling

Yesterday Knight Foundation announced that Vizzuality and CartoDB have received a grant to help build an open source tool for journalists that will enable better storytelling with maps online. We have long been advocates of storytelling using maps and data visualization and this grant will allow us to help make it easier for everyone. As part of the Prototype Fund our project aims to simplify the process of combining narratives maps and interactions into a single web page.

We are excited about the process and know that we will learn a lot along the way. The project will give us the opportunity to test and explore how newsrooms and independent journalists see interactive maps fitting into the stories they tell. It will let us dig deep into the how maps can enhance news stories and how text and multimedia can enhance maps. In the process we will develop an experimental new library for combining maps and other content on the web. The library will be useful for both newsrooms and individuals trying to use maps in interesting ways.

Vizzuality and CartoDB join a group of 23 other projects working to explore new approaches to delivering information to the public. On our end we will be collaborating with journalists to isolate and simplify some of the key online mapping techniques that help enrich and support digital stories. We are excited to get members of the journalism community involved. You can follow and take part in the development process on our Odyssey.js GitHub page or follow updates here on our blog.

If you are interested in the Knight Prototype Fund applications for the next round of grants is due January 31st.

As always get in touch with us on Twitter at @CartoDB.

This post was originally published on our Vizzuality blog.