Millions of Muslims have descended upon Mecca and the city’s outlying areas once again for Hajj, the annual pilgrimage.
Last year I made note that most news orgs have rather light coverage of the event, and the same holds true this year.
All the big names – Washington Post, Guardian, BBC, etc – have news stories on the event, but have done little to go beyond wire-driven copy.
NYTimes does have a couple blog posts. And LA Times once again stands out from the pack, this time creating a niffty Hajj Blog tracker
I’m happy to report Al Jazeera’s coverage online has fared better this year. News stories, photos on Flickr, diary pieces and YouTube videos. One thing we tried to do a little differently was a Google Map to synthesize it all.
What to do you think though – Is putting the photos and videos and stories and the multitude of different colored lines just too much to take in? Or is it great to be able to access all this stuff in one place?
Check the page out on Al Jazeera though, for a larger view of the map.