Josh Williams

On the Web: American Observer Crime Reports
Skills: PHP, CakePHP, MySQL, XML, JavaScript, Gmap API, Cron

The American Observer is a student publication of the School of Communication at American University. Various courses across the different journalism programs take turns maintaining the site, often publishing several issues a week.

While serving as webmaster for my class’s stint posting a Saturday edition of the Observer, I developed an interactive crime map to support a short article on holiday-related crime.

A command line PHP script parses and stores public data in a MySQL database. The XML data is updated nightly by the District of Columbia on its Web site. Using the CakePHP MVC framework and the Google Map API, I threw together a quick Web site for the Observer that lets site visitors view D.C. police reports by type of crime, neighborhood, police service area or simply chronologically.

While not super polished or feature heavy, to me the project represents the potential for journalistic organizations to use new technology to rapidly develop highly-interactive storytelling features.