Never too Late to Learn

It was my last shift of the semester as web producer, and I felt like my last day offered many new opportunities. Well, maybe not many, but I did get to post a Google map for the first time, with the help of our web supervisor, Kevin Lu.

I wrote a story on the former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates’ funeral procession, and I had to include all of the street closures that were in effect most of the morning. It was the perfect opportunity to put in some extra elements, and the Google map was an obvious choice.

It was a lot of trial and error for Kevin and I as we tried to figure out how to put colored lines on the map to indicate which streets were blocked the public. After we posted the map, we also had to add some sort of key to tell what the different colors on the map meant.

We originally thought we could just use the HTML code we use for the video caption for the map key. However, the dimensions of the caption were not compatible with the dimensions of the map.

I ended up asking for some assistance from our newsroom’s trusty web master, Matt Schrader. He was able to find a table and work some HTML magic that aligned the map and the caption under it. It ended up looking pretty swell, and I was happy with my last web story of the semester.

I spent the rest of my shift at an event on-campus that was aimed at bringing social workers together to fix problems that leave many Angelinos homeless. The story ended up not even being included in the show, so that was a little disappointing. But after posting my story with a Google map, nothing could bring me down!