Another Media Map in (and on) The News

Governing.com's 13th Floor blog features a simple geospatial mash-up from the Wichita Eagle this week.

The Eagle's Wichita Crime Maps is similar to other media mash-ups that we've seen. It presents basic crime data from the local police on a "standard" Google Maps map. There's nothing too earth-shattering here.

But the 13th Floor bloggers do use this to make a point about data-sharing from their point of view as folks who cover local government issues:

Lots of police departments are mapping crime data and lots are putting the maps online. Usually, though, they end up buried deep within government Web sites. I'd guess that most are rarely visited. So, if governments really want the public to see their data (and, in some cases, that might be a pretty big "if"), working with the media on projects like this one makes a lot of sense.