Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad to hear it sparked a Wikipedia quest for you...
The idea here was to try and find some sort of larger set piece graphic we could bring to bear on the crisis in Iraq — and after a couple of days of staring at lots of maps of the desert, it struck me that:
1. The Euphrates is both very long, and very straight for its length. Most rivers would have zig-zagged in such a way that you couldn't do a linear scroll.
2. Visually, the river against the desert is extremely striking, and the wide expanses of empty land are perfect for labeling.
3. Because that's where the water is, almost all settlement and activity in northern and western Iraq run along these river lines.
... so that's where the idea came from. It was a pretty lucky combination of geography and news circumstances. After that came the really quite long and difficult process of figuring out the current status of small towns and cities — much of which is uncertain and hard to find reliable sources on — and doing the writing and editing of the piece. Karen Yourish and Archie Tse did a real marathon of reporting to get that done. Towards the end, the Baghdad bureau kindly went through and confirmed the information that wound up in the final piece, and made additional suggestions for points of interest.
The Kurdish region isn't really addressed in this particular graphic, but you can see many of those towns in the northern part of the Tigris image, over on the right (not under ISIS control).
Comments
Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad to hear it sparked a Wikipedia quest for you...
The idea here was to try and find some sort of larger set piece graphic we could bring to bear on the crisis in Iraq — and after a couple of days of staring at lots of maps of the desert, it struck me that:
1. The Euphrates is both very long, and very straight for its length. Most rivers would have zig-zagged in such a way that you couldn't do a linear scroll.
2. Visually, the river against the desert is extremely striking, and the wide expanses of empty land are perfect for labeling.
3. Because that's where the water is, almost all settlement and activity in northern and western Iraq run along these river lines.
... so that's where the idea came from. It was a pretty lucky combination of geography and news circumstances. After that came the really quite long and difficult process of figuring out the current status of small towns and cities — much of which is uncertain and hard to find reliable sources on — and doing the writing and editing of the piece. Karen Yourish and Archie Tse did a real marathon of reporting to get that done. Towards the end, the Baghdad bureau kindly went through and confirmed the information that wound up in the final piece, and made additional suggestions for points of interest.
The Kurdish region isn't really addressed in this particular graphic, but you can see many of those towns in the northern part of the Tigris image, over on the right (not under ISIS control).