Word Herder

Tools and techniques for readers and writers

Using Google Maps in journalism

I’m a big fan of Google maps in general, but it can be particularly useful when you’re trying to illustrate a story about a particular area. I experimented with it here, while writing a story about an alleged attack by the Russian government on Kyrgyzstan’s cyber infrastructure.
This wasn’t a blindingly impressive use of Google maps, [...]

Why publishers need to innovate

How effectively are we using digital media in our reporting?
I write regularly for some large news organisations. Some embrace suggestions for including new digital assets within stories. I’ve asked others for the opportunity to do basic stuff like provide extra links at the bottom of a story, and been told by some that it’s not [...]

The future of freelancing?

What’s going to happen to us poor freelancers? Newspapers and magazines are closing or scaling back in record numbers. Budgets are being cut, and writers are getting laid off - which means more freelancers on the market, competing for less work. Chilling stuff, to be sure.
But there’s another problem facing freelancers, and it’s one that’s [...]

Get yer graph on

Journalists and fiction writers alike often need access to data about all sorts of stuff. Writing a story about how consumer confidence and home prices just nosedived? Might be handy to be able to correlate the two together, over a 20-year history. Maybe you might want to check them against historical employment data. Or the [...]

About

Word Herder is a site for writers and readers of both fiction and non-fiction. Surf here to read more about useful tools to help you organise your writing and optimise your research. I'm Danny Bradbury and I'm a freelance technology writer writing for the Guardian , the Financial Times, the National Post, Backbone magazine, MSN Canada, and the trade press. Here's a feed showing some of my work.

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Tel: +1 415 692 5451
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