Today I discovered Patchwork Nation over at the CSMonitor website. It's a geospatial display of statistics (by US county) that the publication talks about in news articles, and is correlated with demographic characteristics of each county. I'm not sure how accurate the demographic information is, but the stories are pretty compelling. Today's article on the use of payday lending across the US is not particularly surprising, but interesting nevertheless.
Challenge to readers: Go out to the Patchwork Nation website and critically comment on the tool. I think it could be a great form of journalism, but it currently lacks rigor. I know the CSMonitor team is very interactive with readership, so constructive criticism could definitely make a difference!
ReplyDelete