Few days ago, Jan Martynowski, one of the online journalists of Concentra (the publisher of the two regional newspapers hbvl.be and gva.be) sent me an email to draw my attention on a new application hbvl.be recently started. Since the newspaper's focus is on regional and local news, online readers can insert their postal code to get referred to the news from their neigbourhood. Since few days, it is not only possible to select the news based on the postal code. A google map makes it able to visualize the region and to select the news by clicking on on specified city or village and further on by clicking at a specific news item (which are represented by flags on the map). Users can select which neigbourhood, which period and which type of news (e.g. general news, fire, theft, accident) they want to see on their screen.
In my opinion, the option provided by the newspaper to choose between a postal code or a google map is the right one. Perhaps they should focus even more on the latter option, since clicking on a map is more tempting then inserting a postal code. It provides the news at a simple glace on the google map. Can it be easier? I wonder how long it will take until the other regional newspaper, gva.be, will adopt this great feature.
Update: It seems that also Het Nieuwsblad Online started to use this kind of feature. As predicted, also GVA.be already uses maps to visualize local news.
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