As mapping skills spread, journalists are plotting data beyond U.S. boundary files. Reporters in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and other European countries use GIS (geographic information systems) software for showing crime incidents, business data or demographic trends.

At Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest newspaper, journalists Nils Mulvad and Flemming Svith do mapping regularly using a GIS program called MAPS by Denmark-based FSS. Currently, according to Svith, about five people are using mapping in the newsroom.

Recently, Svith has mapped the wages of municipal employees compared to costs and wages in the private market. His story showed that 1.4 billion Kroner (about $188 million) were being put in the wrong pockets and that about 100,000 employees earned too little. "I could only have done this story using a map," Svith said.

GIS also speeds up production. "Before, graphics did the maps and you couldn't do any analysis and it took a whole day to create. Now, I can do a map and send it to graphics. We have a lot more maps in the paper now."

Netherlands

Dick van Eijk a reporter and editor with NRC Handelsblad in the Netherlands also uses mapping in reporting. Some are quicker mapping projects. "A growing number of maps is not the result of extensive data analysis, but not a copy of a map provided by others either. In these cases we receive a data file, e.g. from a government agency, from Eurostat, from the OECD or another organization. This file contains data for every municipality, region of country in a particular area. From these data we generate our own thematic maps using mapping software. Some simple calculations may precede the creation of the map, e.g. dividing by number of inhabitants of the area. Sometimes this is done in a spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel), sometimes in the mapping program itself (MapInfo, both on the Mac and on PC)."

At NRC Handelsblad there are three people familiar enough with MapInfo and Excel to do mapping – two reporters and one person in the graphics department.

Van Eijk says they also do bigger CAR projects using mapping. In April, Van Eijk did a project on royal decorations awarded on Queen's Day.

"Typically some 2,000 people a year receive such an award on Queen's Day, and some 2,000 more on other occasions. It turned out that the geographical distribution of these decorations was very uneven. That was remarkable. I had a hunch that this was a structural phenomenon, but I could not prove that using one year of data. So this year I analyzed all the royal decorations awarded on Queen's Day since the new law on these decorations in 1996." The new law requires uniform rules in every part of the country for determining who gets awards.

"Using five years of data I could show not only that the geographical distribution of royal decorations was very uneven, but I could also prove that this uneven distribution was consistent over the years. In some municipalities the number of decorations per head was more than twenty times as high as in others."

New journalists are also learning mapping. Peter Verwey, director of the new media department at the School of Journalism in Utrecht, the Netherlands, incorporates ArcView training into digital journalism coursework. Verwey's students used maps to study the relationship between the crime rate in a police district and the money spent on the police force in that district. They also have used maps to look at restaurant inspections in Utrecht.

As CAR has become a more common tool in newsrooms in Europe so have geographical information systems. Will records access issues slow European journalists' ability to do mapping?

Not in Denmark, says Mulvad of Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten and the chair of the Danish Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.

"The country is divided geographically in lots of ways – postal codes, local authorities, and so on. It's very easy to divide political thinking, income, police solving crimes, prostitutes, foreigners and so on geographically and put it in a map in the paper," he said. "Actually, because of that and because of the easy way to use maps, we think mapping perhaps will be used before using database managers for a lot of journalists."

Jennifer LaFleur can be reached by e-mail at jlafleur@postnet.com