Data Visualization: Journalism's Voyage West | Rural West Initiative

The Growth of US Newspapers, 1690-2011 from Geoff McGhee on Vimeo. Here is neat project from the Rural West Initiative at Stanford: Data Visualization: Journalism's Voyage West
. The patterns are about what you would expect--newspapers spread west with white settlement, filling in the rural areas for most of the 20th century, and declining in those same areas in recent decades. Clicking on the circles links you to the relevant page over at the Library of Congress's Chronicling America website, from which the data is drawn. It is a fun site to play around with and familiarize yourself with the history of newspapers in your region.