Photoengraving, photowires, and microcomputers: technological incentives for journalistic cartography

Maps can contribute to the presentation of news, especially when the event is spatially complex or its location significant but little known. The two-dimensional cartographic framework is ideal for portraying distance relationships, describing routes and boundaries, and revealing causal similarities in spatial patterns. Yet in the news media, where the linear structure of printing type dominated for centuries the format of newspapers and magazines, the map's areal organization of symbolically coded information has deterred the widespread use of journalistic cartography. Not surprisingly, the development of reproduction technology that treated the page as a single image, rather than as an array of parallel lines of type, preceded a fuller use of news maps. Moreover, the transition from hot type to cold type, and more recently to electronic pagination and computer graphics, has promoted not only a closer integration of maps and text but also an appreciation of the map as art, to decorate the page as well as to inform the reader. -from Author