Geojournalism.org builds on the online Geojournalism Handbook, which was released back in 2013. The original eleven tutorials from the Handbook are included on the site – as well as others which have been added along the way.

The tutorials are organized under Tracks where similar topics are grouped together – although many headings only have one or two tutorials. They are also rated according to how difficult they are – for example, Tips for Using Color in Maps is ‘easy’, Cleaning Data with Refine is ‘medium’ and How to Map Photos Using OpenStreetMap and TileMill is ‘hard’.

A visualization is worth a thousand words

The idea behind geojournalism.org is to give environmental journalists (as well as designers and developers working in the field) the resources to “dive into data visualization,” explained Willie Shubert, Senior Project Coordinator at the Earth Journalism Network, one of the platform sponsors.

“Our main goal is to help people understand the global transformation that is happening to our environment,” Shubert told onMedia, “and one of the best ways to do this is when journalists give their stories more context by using maps and data visualizations.”

For Shubert, it was important that the tutorials are written specifically for journalists and show how journalists are using these tools to solve problems that they face in their reporting.

For example, although there’s masses of information on the internet about how to use FrontlineSMS (a mobile messaging tool), geojournalism.org has a blow-by-blow account of how the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists set up FrontlineSMS to create a mobile newsroom for disaster reporting.

Geojournalism.org wants you!

Geojournalism.org is open to people contributing their own tutorials and case studies and updating existing ones. If you have something you want to share with the environmental journalism community, you can get in touch with them through the website or via Twitter: @GeoJournalism.

Written by Kate Hairsine, edited by Nik Martin

You might also be interested in reading these onMedia’s posts: Reporting on climate change: Part I and Part II

While I always use a notebook and pen during interviews, I much prefer to type out my thoughts, quotes or articles outlines rather writing them out by hand. And if I want to type when I’m out and about without a laptop – or working somewhere cramped like a on bus or a plane – I need a good writing app so I took several of them for a twirl. This article was written in the apps reviewed below then copy and pasted together using Word and Google Docs to get in a final spell check and formatting consistency.

What I am looking for

• Several of the buttons crucial to writing text are regulated Apple’s secondary keyboard, the one you switch to when you need to type in numbers. To avoid flicking keyboards, I wouldn’t consider an app that doesn’t offer extra row of keys above the main keyboard with the most commonly used punctuation marks, such as a comma button, quotation mark button and right and left arrows (which makes it easier to scroll through the text).
• The app should work on all devices and computers you use. For example, I have an iPad, iPhone, a Mac at home and Windows computer at the office and I don’t want to deal with any problems transferring and reading files.
• The more you can see, the better you can write so the less of the already cramped screen space the keyboard takes up, the better.
• Moving through the text should require absolute minimal use of the Apple magnifying glass.

First a word about the big three

I’m deliberately not reviewing the big three word processing programs and apps – that’s Apple’s Pages, Microsoft Word and Google Docs / Drive. Because when it comes to actual writing (as opposed to making the layout look good) on a tablet or smartphone, none of them would be my first choice. If you simply can’t get away from a major word processor, perhaps because you have to submit your work in a certain format, then I recommend doing the bulk of writing in one of the plain text apps below and then exporting the text to the word processor as late in the process as possible.

On to the writing apps …

Most of these apps take a minimalist approach and do away with the margins, page breaks and other page layout features. Instead they opt for a page that’s like an endlessly long scroll of paper. And instead of formatting buttons for bold or italics, they use Markdown, a fairly easy to use set of codes where, for example, # turns text into a title, ** makes text bold and * is for italics.

When I’m writing an article of up to 2,000 words, these codes are the only formatting I need. Markdown is also great for anyone publishing to a blog as the formatted text can easily be converted to CMS-friendly HTML you can paste into your site.

My test favorite – iA Writer

iA Writer (iOS, $4.99) introduced me to the joy of being able to move the cursor forward and back a letter or word at a time on iOS devices. On the iPad and iPhone, iA Writer does an admirable job of filling the screen with my writing, even if the font is a bit larger than I would ideally choose. This basic version (there is a more expensive professional version available) offers useful export options to get your writing into other programs or to other people.

The company heavily advertises its ‘Focus’ mode that fades out all the text except the part you’re working on. While some may like this feature, I tend to move things around a lot when I write so I’d rather see as much text as possible. There is also a Mac program that offers many of the same “focus on the writing” features as the apps. By purchasing another app, I can also easily sync files between my iPad and iPhone and Mac via iCloud or Dropbox.

Worth watching – Daedalus

Using Daedalus (iOS $0.99) to write on both the iPad and the iPhone simple and it has detailed instructions walk you through the app’s features. It’s the app’s focus on what it calls ‘Stacks’ rather than individual files that I loved. Simply put, you put your texts into stacks rather like a stack of paper rather than saving them into files. It is impossible to beat for creating, organizing and moving around writing – especially for someone like me who constantly jots down notes. It means I can review them with a swipe rather than having to open and close a dozen files.

Like the other writing apps, Daedalus includes an extra row of keyboard buttons, including opening and closing quotation marks and brackets as well as a hash key and asterisk for Markdown formatting. But unlike other apps, you can change the keys in the extra row to the ones you use most often.

Moving through the text a character at a time is easily done by tapping on the margins of the screen. Screen formatting on the iPhone is great, but Daedalus, unfortunately, leaves the margins and fonts too large in its iPad version  – putting in white space where I’d like to see more of what I’m writing.

The larger drawback to Daedalus, however, is it seems difficult at best and nearly impossible at worst to get the text you spent so much time writing in Markdown exported out of the app with the proper formatting.  If you don’t find yourself using headings, bold, italics or other character formatting, Daedalus could be for you. But if you’re a fan of thick bold print or sloping italic text then look elsewhere.

Also not bad – Editorial

Editorial (iOS, $6.99) has the brilliant option of wiping along the top row of “extra” keys to move the cursor. It also has simple options for adjusting line spacing and font size that aren’t generally included by other plain text apps.

If you find you often need to repeat the same phrase in your writing, Editorial’s ‘snippets’ will make you life easier. Snippets allows you to assign an abbreviation to text, and bring it up by tying the abbreviations. One of the suggested snippets, ‘ppp’ also pastes whatever you’ve copied into the clipboard into your Editorial file – making it super easy to copy a quote from an interview transcription to your article.

But for my purposes, Editorial comes up a bit short on the iPhone by failing to include a comma on the quick list row of key for the iPhone. I’d gladly trade the square and rounded bracket keys for a quotation marks and a comma key.

Not worth the bother on an iPhone – Byword

Byword (iOS, $2.99) made a good first impression on my iPad with useful arrow keys and by showing a lot of my writing. But when I switched to the iPhone version, I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble because I had to spend too much time switching back and forth between the “regular” keyboard and the “123” keyboard to get to the comma and quotation keys.

If none of the apps here strikes your fancy, there are tons of text editors waiting to be downloaded and used. Then let me know why it works better for you.

Check out our other tools and apps for journalists posts.

Written by Sean Sinico, edited by Kate Hairsine

How do you make a JamSnap?

After launching the app, tap the camera icon on the top right-hand side. This will engage the camera and gives you access to a few simple controls: tap to focus, flash on/off, and switching between the iPhone’s front or rear camera. Or, you can upload a photo from your iPhone’s photo album.

Like Instagram, JamSnap offers you a square frame for photos, so you’ll have to adjust your image to fill the frame. Once you’re finished adjusting the image, tap “Choose”.

Then comes the interesting part.

A prompt will appear on your screen to “tap & hold anywhere to add sounds”. So, choose a point on your image where you think it’s most appropriate to add a sound, then tap and hold to record. As you’re holding to record you can move your sound tag around the image. The limit for a clip is 10 seconds.

Give some thought as to how you are holding your iPhone before you tap to record. Is it pointing the right way to capture the sound you want?

You can add up to 10 audio clips to each image.

To discard an audio clip, simply tap, hold and swipe the clip away to the edge of your mobile screen.

There are several sound effects that you can add, such as a voice exclaiming “Oh my god!”. Similarly, after you have recorded a clip, you can add audio filters. But these audio sfx or filters are probably not going to be what you’re looking for in a journalism context.

Once you’re finished recording your audio clips, click “Next” and you can add a caption to the image, and choose whether to make the JamSnap public or private. You can also share your JamSnap directly to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and App.net social media networks.

Click “Share” and you’re done. Check out the video below for a demo.

From your user feed on the JamSnap website you can locate the < > icons for the html code to embed your JamSnap into a blog or website. Either manually log on to your feed by typing https://jamsnap.com/user/insertyourusername – or use the share functions in the app to email yourself the image link or share via Twitter which will also generate a link to the image.

JamSnap images and audio also appear and play directly within a Twitter timeline which is very useful for getting people to actually see and hear your stories.

What could journalists produce with JamSnap?

JamSnaps developer Mayank Sanganeria told onMedia that his inspiration for the app was to create a way of easily adding information or context to photographs he wanted to share with his family and friends.

That’s a good starting point for storytelling or documenting an event.

Potentially you could use JamSnap to produce an image with an audio dispatch, or with an interview soundbite or a series of audio clips, and of course a caption. Another story format to explore might be to first create a collage of images in another app, importing this collage into JamSnap, and then adding audio clips plus a caption.

JamSnap also works with an external microphone for recording audio.

Sanganeria said an Android version is a likely to be the next step in development, and perhaps a “Pro” version for mobile journalists. At the moment onMedia is testing a beta version of JamSnap that lets you record longer clips and insert audio from Dropbox and the AudioCopy app. The ability to record and edit audio in another app and insert into the JamSnap image is very useful.

These days it’s quite rare that an application I use only after a few minutes makes its way straight to my page of favorite reporting apps but I think JamSnap is one that may well stay.

What else should journalists know about JamSnap?

Cost: Free.

Languages: The user interface is only in English at the moment.

Audio format: Audio is recorded on your iPhone in the .m4a format and then uploaded to JamSnap’s server and also encoded into .mp3 and .ogg – this allows audio to be shared and played on different browsers and devices.

Author: Guy Degen

What is the iRig app?

These days, journalists with smart phones have a wide array of tools to use in their reporting. For those who need to record and send audio, the free iRig Recorder app for iOS and Android is worth checking out.

I had never heard of the iRig Recorder app until Austrian public broadcasting, ORF, called asking me to do a Q&A on post-election protests in Cambodia, where I’m based. “Sure,” I said, but pointed out that I didn’t have a land line (as relatively few in Cambodia do) and that the audio quality of a mobile phone interview might leave a little to be desired.

No problem, the producer said, pointing me to iRig Recorder, a nifty app that, while not perfect, offers pretty good sound quality, a simple interface, and lots of sharing options. The ORF producer and I could talk via Skype and I would use the app to record my answers and then send the audio to Vienna.

I downloaded the free version from iTunes (it’s also available for Android), and was initially a little worried seeing the middling reviews there. But the ORF producer seemed enthusiastic.

Easy to use

The app has an intuitive interface. On opening it, you’ll see a screen with a large blue RECORD button near the bottom. One touch of that and you’re on. A large time display shows how much you’ve recorded and you can stop the action with the PAUSE button, then start up again where you left off. At the bottom on the screen, a waveform is generated as you record so you can make sure the sound is coming through. I thought the levels seemed pretty low, but found there was a way to boost things later.

When you’re done, touch RECORD again, and you’ll get a list of the recordings on the phone. The default name is the date and the time of the recording. But the app lets you give each recording a unique name if you want. Just tap the file to type.

Then, hit the blue button next to the date and a processing screen opens up. On the free version, your options are limited to boosting your levels. But iRig allows you to determine what percentage you want to the increase the volume and whether you’re working with speech or music.

There are a bunch of optional processors available, such as tone optimization, cleaning up background noise, slowing the speed and changing pitch, among others. But the processing package costs $4.99. If you want to edit what you’ve recorded, you’ll also have to shell out a little cash. Trimming and making internal edits will set you back $4.99. Or, you can buy a package with all the added functions for $7.99.

I didn’t need any of that, since I was sending over my audio to the Austrians, and they edited out my stumbles at their end.

Sharing is simple

Once I’d finished my recording, I hit the EXPORT / SHARE symbol at the top of the file list screen. I could email the audio, use iTunes file sharing, share it on a local wi-fi network, FTP it, or upload it to SoundCloud. Most options gave me the choice of exporting high-quality (.wav file, 44.1 kHz), medium-quality (.m4a file, 96 kbps) or low-quality (.m4a file, 32 kbps) files. The email option limited me to an .m4a file.

ORF had sent me their FTP settings beforehand, and my three-minute Q&A went over fairly quickly, despite my less-than-stellar internet speed.

As you might expect, the audio is not going to be exactly studio quality. You are using your smartphone’s mic, after all. But I found it acceptable, and of course so did Austria’s ORF.

The company behind iRig, IK Multimedia, makes a slew of accessories. The ones most interesting to journalists are the compact microphone that plugs into your phone’s audio jack and a larger handheld version. But they’ll cost you around $30 or $70 respectively.

The downsides

The iRig app is free, so you can’t expect perfection. Some complain that the paid add-ons are almost a necessity to get the quality and flexibility you might need. There is some truth to this. And without a high-quality mic, you’re audio is not going to be top notch, granted.

Using iRig to record my side of a Skype Q&A

Plus, you can’t take a phone call and then turn on iRig to record that conversation. As I mentioned, I Skyped with the station in Europe on my computer and recorded my side of the interview into my iPhone. So you’ll need to be able to work with that limitation.

I had forgotten to put my phone in Airplane mode when I started recording the Q&A with Vienna and got a phone call right in the middle of it, which put a quick end to things and crashed the app. Luckily, we had the time to do the interview again. Be sure to always engage Airplane / Offline mode before recording audio or video with any app.

But overall, for quick recordings, and especially Q&A’s with a studio that has more advanced audio editing equipment and can fix glitches and level problems, iRig is more than adequate. It’s simple to use and has a clean interface.

What else should journalists know about iRig?

Cost: Free, but the add-on packages for audio processing, editing and other features cost between $2.99 and $7.99.

Sharing: It’s easy. You can choose email, iTunes file sharing, local wi-fi, FTP, or upload your file to SoundCloud.

Support: IK Multimedia has an online FAQ and a support contact page.

Language: The interface is in English.

Author: Kyle James

What is Steller?

Steller is a free storytelling app developed by Mombo Labs. It allows you to create multimedia stories directly on your iPhone or iPod touch by adding photos, videos and text. After several months in beta, Steller was made available in March on Apple’s App Store.

The number of people using the web on their mobile devices is ever growing. Moreover, newsrooms are realizing that not only do they have to be digital first, but they also have to produce content that can be consumed on a small screen. It’s interesting to see how apps such as Steller are focused on producing multimedia stories optimized to be consumed on mobile devices only.

Simple start

When you first open the app and click on “collections” you’ll find a variety of stories created with Steller. Plenty of stories have also been published on the social network Pinterest. Most of them look quite appealing as all Steller stories transmit the sense of literally browsing through pages of a booklet full of multimedia content.

Another thing that comes to mind while opening Stellar on your iPhone or iPod touch is its similarity to the iPad storytelling app Storehouse. Both Steller and Storehouse offer a simple and user-friendly design. The Steller user interface is self-explanatory and the app provides useful visual hints while creating your multimedia story. Once downloaded, you have to sign up for a free Steller account or you can log in with your Facebook account. Then you are ready to start your first project.

We decided to create a test Steller story with three different kinds of media – text, photos and video. In our story about a Pakistani man called Imran Mehr, we wanted to combine four short videos, text and some pictures of Imran. Once we clicked on “post a new story”, Stellar offered us three options: Add text, add a video or photo.

One page – one medium

Each page of this “digital multimedia booklet” represents basically one medium. We decided to start with a title page, so we needed to pick the option “text”. Once we made our decision, we could choose between eight different text templates. They all differ from their designs. They allow you, for example, to change font and layout. The same applied while adding our videos: Steller provides twelve different options (video with a title in the center, video with a text box on the bottom, etc.). Also the text option offers a variety of styles (big letters, small letters, font color, etc.).

Logical workflow, easy publishing

The work flow within Steller is always the same. After choosing whether to first post text, a video or a photo, you can select between several layout templates and then adjust your photo or video by selecting and dragging the elements with your fingers. Once you are done with one page, you can simply add another page by tapping on the icon at the bottom of the right corner. Page by page you gradually produce your story. If you make a mistake, you can easily go back and edit the content. Of course, like any multimedia story, it’s good to sketch out a plan first.

When you’re ready to publish, Steller lets you distribute your story on its own network and as well on other social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

Some drawbacks with typing text and video files

Steller is user friendly and easy to start. It took only about 20 minutes to get used to its interface and to get to know its options. The project itself was finished within a few hours (production time for the videos not included of course).

Nevertheless, there are some drawbacks in the current version. Steller does not allow the user to add audio files. We had a range of audio files we wanted to use but had to rely on video, text and pictures only. And you can not combine multiple media on one page. Steller only allows combining text with videos or text with pictures. It’s not possible to add a video and a picture or two videos on one page.

Writing a long story on an iPhone is also a challenge because it takes time typing on the small visual keyboard. Text import options are not yet available. Dictating text via the iPhone’s microphone and voice recognition system might work better but you have to be connected to the internet.

Then there’s video. The frame size is vertical. For viewers who are used to turning an iPhone horizontally to watch a video, the vertical layout might feel strange.

Last but not least the size of a multimedia story is limited to 10MB only. That means if you’re working with videos it’s very easy to exceed the 10 MB. In our project we had to delete two videos and shorten the duration of the other two we wanted to use (which by the way were all around one minute long). Steller did not mention its size limit on its homepage, so it was quite frustrating to get the notification “Story too large. This story exceeds the maximum size” after hitting the publishing icon.

What else should journalists know about Steller?

Steller is definitely an easy to use app that supports a quick workflow with remarkable results and offers a clear focus on mobile devices. Steller might work best for picture-driven stories attracting the more “visual reader” on a quick commute who likes to be entertained by a short, but visually appealing story.

Cost: free on Apple’s App Store. It’s optimized for iPhone and iPod touch running iOS 7.0 or later. Not available for Android.

Publishing: Steller only publishes your project within its own network and you can share via other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. You can not embed in a blog.

Support: Users can log on to their help & support page and it’s also possible to write an email directly to support@mombo.com.

Languages: The Steller interface is currently only in English.

Author: Daniela Späth