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Mideast turmoil: behind the Post’s interactive map

March 10, 2011

Among the mind-boggling factors about the unrest in the Middle East are the speed of the developments and the physical ground that they cover. The Washington Post interactive on Middle East and North Africa in turmoil, created by information designer Wilson Andrews and world producer Sam Sanders, has been fantastically useful over the last couple of weeks in tracking this developing story. I literally find myself going to it daily.

As a digital editor charged with managing daily content and production, I normally shy away from launching complicated projects if they require constant feeding. But the weight of this story, the value of even the incremental updates to be seen in the context of the rest of the Middle East, make it very much worth it. I am happy to say the entire production came out of a daily web news meeting where we talked about the need for context.

The map portion of the interactive “is just the key,” says Wilson. He notes that in creating it, we had to make a choice to have time or location dominate the main visual. But each day’s developments and the spread of the conflicts told us location was truly an more important part of the story. We knew that readers were being inundated with stories about unrest but that the places where changing.

So by design, the map is your key to the day’s content. Each country tab, which correlates to the map when you click in, gives you a recap of recent events (some daily, if warranted). We wanted it to follow and show the developing narrative of each country and of the entire region. It serves as a redux, a place to read-in as well as a contextual visual. Also, a big shout out to Amanda Zamora who helped push for curated Twitter lists to flow in by country. This serves the user, in my opinion, in a way that a feed from a hashtag might not.

As Sam Sanders puts it, “we didn’t just create something cool that we expect people to come to.” We attempted to use the medium and our resources in a way that gets the story to users. It’s an important one.

Cory Haik / Deputy Editor, Universal News Desk