Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Map Race

There is no reason that anyone outside of Philadelphia should be interested in a newspaper article exploring the best way from the city to the Jersey Shore. Unless, of course, that article includes a scrollytelling map race. Luckily that is exactly what the Philadelphia Inquirer's Race to the Shore contains. 

on Friday, July 7 five employees of the Philadelphia Inquirer set off at the same time from the newspaper's newsroom to travel to a pizza restaurant on the Ocean City boardwalk. One of the employees set off on a bike, one took the train, one set off to drive the expressway, and two employees were determined to drive the route using only back roads.

You can discover what happened next on the Inquirer's wonderful scrollytelling map race interactive. Using five animated colored polylines the Inquirer has mapped the route of each of the five employees' journeys to the Jersey Shore. The map includes a time stamp which means that as you scroll through the map you get to see how each of the employees' journeys are progressing in comparison to the journeys of their colleagues. In other words the map allows you to experience the Race to the Shore as it happened.

I won't tell you who won the race to the Jersey Shore. You'll have to scroll to the bottom of the Inquirer's map race to discover that for yourself.

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