The Nebraska News Map will be set to two default layers: Local and Statewide News Outlets and Outlets Per County. News outlets are represented as dots, and the counties are color coded based on the number of news outlets. When both these layers are turned on, you will be able to click around the state, select a dot in a location (representing presence of a news outlet) as well as get a summary of all the news outlets based in that county.
The first default layer is in the top lefthand corner and labeled News Outlets and has three options that you can click, which will change the visible layers over the entire map and make certain things visible either on top of each other or alone. To simplify what is being shown, turn off extraneous layers.
The Local and Statewide Outlets layer will be automatically selected. This map layer shows small dots around the state, each representing a local or statewide news outlet. If you click on any dot, you should see listed the news outlets at that specific location.
In addition, when you first visit the map in the Data Layer box, Outlets Per County will automatically be selected. Note that if you’re zoomed out, you’ll see multiple outlets.
When you first start clicking around, you should see the specific news outlets in each location (or dot) as well as a list of all the news outlets in that county. *Note that if a broadcast station provides coverage in that county but is not based in that county (i.e. does not have a newsroom in that county), then that station will only show up in the county where it has a newsroom. Similarly, if a newspaper covers multiple counties, their presence is noted with a dot in the county/municipality it is based in. For more on the methodology behind the map, please head to the FAQ page.
The TV and Radio Coverage layer can be viewed alone or in conjunction with the Local and Statewide news outlets layer. You can unclick this to view the TV and Radio Coverage and Nebraska Public Media coverage, or you can view all those individually.
If all three are selected, the map may look crowded and be difficult to read. Refresh the page to return to the default view.
Once you’ve decided what News Outlet layer you want to view, that is a good time to start selecting different Data Layers. The Data Layers include Census information as well as journalist staffing information and local news outlets per county information. You can only have one data layer on at a time.