Quick post on media coverage of Southern California fires

Posted on October 24, 2007 by Howard Owens

I haven’t had time to follow the news of the fires in my native Southern California as closely as I would like, but it’s a major story.

On the time scale, I need to rush through this post, so just some random things.

First, I found this list of structures destroyed on SignOnSanDiego.com and wondered why it wasn’t a map. So in about five minutes, I made one: San Diego Fires Map.

Tools used: A Google Spreadsheet; This batch geocoder; This map generation wizard. These tools are pretty much self-explanatory.

My friends at SignOnSanDiego.com, LATimes.com and VenturaCountyStar.com are all doing a great job. Each site has their strengths. I’m particularly impressed with the 10K + views some of Ventura’s videos have received.

I was going to comment on why the newspaper sites weren’t blowing out their home page to fire-only coverage, like CBS 8 in SanDiego did, but within the past 15 minutes, SOSD has done just that.

For ongoing coverage of the media coverage, check out Lost Remote.

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  • http://www.blognetnews.com Dave Mastio

    You can check out California’s news and politics blogs reacting to the fires here: http://www.blognetnews.com/california

  • http://thevinman.wordpress.com Vince Kern

    Howard…..My thoughts are with you and Bille knowing you have many family and friends there.

    Did you see Larry Himmel’s reporting on his own home burning??? I have a brief story and link to the you-tuve video of him doing so yesterday if you’re interested. He was also interviewed on FOX News last night….Be well….Vince

  • http://www.signonsandiego.com/firemaps/ Adam Endicott

    Those structures actually are on our map: http://www.signonsandiego.com/firemap/. We just have them off when the map first loads because we’re up around 500 points, plus other fire info, and the load time on a typical PC was unacceptable. Click the checkbox below the map to map the destroyed structures. You can also selectively turn them on or off by zip code.

    We’re constantly improving this map, so please let me know if you have any other ideas.

  • http://www.signonsandiego.com/firemap/ Adam Endicott

    Oops, sorry, typo in the link off my name above.

  • http://www.melissaworden.com/blogs/xdegree/2007/10/good-reads-102607/ Good reads 10.26.07 : the x degree: exploring and redefining

    [...] Howard Owens has posted some more links to media coverage, too. [...]