Newspapers Starting to Do ‘Mashups’

I've long believed that newspapers should be using the APIs of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft to build dynamic mapping into their sites and classifieds areas. Maps are a critical component of the local product offering and newspapers typically don't have the internal resources to develop best of breed online applications. So why not build on top of existing APIs from the top engines?

This Editor & Publisher piece discusses how one Kentucky paper is mapping yard sales on a Google Maps API. Here Boston.com maps local movie theaters on a Google Map. I'm sure there are a number of other examples out there.

More newspapers need to take advantage of these mapping tools sooner rather than later.