WORKSHOP | April 22, 2025
$40.00
Understanding Protomaps: An introduction to open-source, interactive maps for news
Maps can make your reporting more dynamic—but most mapping tools are expensive, tied to third-party services, and prone to breaking over time. What if you could skip all that?
Join the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas for a 60-minute workshop,“Make Your Own Maps: An Introduction to Protomaps for Journalists,” with John Keefe, Weather Data Editor at The New York Times.
🗓️ Monday, April 22 at 5 p.m. Eastern / 4 p.m. Central Time
You’ll learn how Protomaps, a new open-source tool, makes it possible to host interactive maps like images or audio files—on servers you own or control. That means no surprise fees, no disappearing maps, and no dependency on outside platforms.
In this workshop, you’ll get a clear overview of how tiled maps work, what sets Protomaps apart, and how you can start building and publishing your own data maps for journalism.
What you’ll learn in this 60-minute workshop
-
An overview of how tiled maps work and how they’re used in journalism
-
An introduction to Protomaps, a free, open-source tool for serving map tiles using open data. You’ll learn how Protomaps lets you store and serve your own maps in a single file, with no tracking, no API limits, and full control — perfect for offline use or if you prefer to avoid relying on Google or Mapbox.
-
How you can make and host your own data maps on servers you control
Learn more about Protomaps before the session.
By the end of the workshop, you’ll receive access to the workshop recording for on-demand reference, a tipsheet on Protomaps, and a certificate of completion.
John Keefe is the Weather Data Editor at the New York Times. He previously made graphics at the Times about the 2020 election and contributed to coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic, for which the paper won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He has been a senior data and visuals editor for breaking news and climate coverage at CNN and worked at Quartz, where he was the investigations editor and also led the Quartz AI Studio. Keefe established the Data News Team at public radio station WNYC, leading a team of journalists who specialized in data reporting, coding, and design. He ran WNYC’s news division for nearly a decade. A self-described “professional beginner,” Keefe runs a tinkering and teaching company called Really Good Smarts LLC. He has taught classes about online investigations, data journalism, machine learning, and journalism products at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Keefe also has led classes and workshops at Columbia University, Stanford University, the New School University, New York University, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, and was an Innovator in Residence at West Virginia University’s Reed College of Media.
Instructors
John Keefe
Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas
300 West Dean Keeton
Room 3.212
Austin, TX, 78712
Phone: 512-471-1391
Email: journalismcourses@austin.utexas.edu
