Time to start asking for lat/long on maps

Unfortunately, we had to cover one of those news stories that turns your stomach this week. In the process, I was making a Google map to illustrate where a 12-year-old girl’s body had been found.

Since it wasn’t at an exact address, the map couldn’t be as precise as we wanted. So I asked the police PIO for the latitude and longitude of the location. They weren’t able to provide it this time, but you can imagine that this will become a standard operating procedure in the future. With more and more cars equipped with navigation systems, and more and more people using online mapping tools, lat/long will become as common as street addresses and zip codes are today.