Monday, August 2, 2010

Good journalism meets cutting edge media

This is just awesome. The New Orleans Times-Picayune's Dan Swenson, Emmett Mayer III and Ryan Smith have been doing some outstanding graphics work during the paper's coverage of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They've outdone themselves with the latest offering--an animated graphic showing the spill's track through the gulf and an annotated timeline of key events since April 20.

The Times-Pic (www.nola.com) and the Mobile Press-Register (www.al.com) have provided the most informative, most accurate and most complete coverage of the spill, its effects and the bumbling federal response. In sourcing my own Deepwater Horizon Incident Timeline, I've relied heavily on these two publications for links.  Why? 

Because they've gotten it right, and they've usually gotten it first.

Click the image for the animation.  It may take some time to load, but it's worth it.


Gimme some feedback in the comments.

4 comments :

Lisa G in NZ said...

hi, I think my comment was lost... great graphic tracking the 100 days... cool, thanks

Any credence to rumours "the whole sea floor is about to explode"... or just alarmism? (what do your sources say?)

cheers from NZ

David L. said...

Hi, Lisa. Thanks for reading and thanks for posting.

There is no credence to those stories, whatsoever. They were started by Matt Simmons, an alleged "energy expert." Simmons is actually an investment banker who publicly announced a large short position in BP stock, and promptly went on the air with wild-assed stories about flying blowout preventers, runaway gushers kept secret and an impending mega-disaster, all in an effort to drive BP's stock down.

David L. said...

There is a YouTube video making the rounds this week that purports to show the sea floor rising, then suddenly collapsing among a storm of silt and mud.

ROVMan, an ROV operator who posts frequently at the Oildrum blog, says the video actually shows the ROV leaving its "parking space" on the bottom. What appears to be a rise and fall of the sea floor is actually a change in the point of view of the camera, and the swirl of sediment is caused by the ROV's thrusters.

Lisa G in NZ said...

Thanks for that... very interesting. I'll share where I see the alarmists playing this rumour tune.

Keep up the great blog! ;)

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