There are plenty of Internet tools to help you create a timeline, but one tool that is popular with media organizations is TimelineJS.

What is TimelineJS?

TimelineJS (Java Script) lets you easily link to different multimedia sources. So as well as text, you can include videos from YouTube and Vimeo, audio from SoundCloud, photos from Flickr, Tweets, Googlemaps and Wikipedia entries and more. Scribd is also useful for including text documents.

Other media are regularly added so check with the TimelineJS website to see what else they support.

As a result, TimelineJS makes it easy to visually show events and the interactivity means users can explore further if they want to.

How can journalists use TimelineJS?

Timelines can be used to show the chronology of any event, from the history of the struggle for Apartheid in South Africa to post-election violence in Kenya. To give you an idea of what it is all about, I created a short timeline showing the first West African countries to gain independence.

As you can see in our example, the slides incorporate video, audio, photos, Wikipedia entries and a Tweet.

If you or your media organization follow a story over a period of time, you can also use your own text, photos, audio and video linked together in a timeline.

While there are no limitations on what you can use the tool for, as it says on its website, TimelineJS is best used with short texts and “strong chronological narratives. It doesn’t work well for stories that need to jump around in the timeline”.

Several news organizations have used the tool to present information about murder or missing people cases that are otherwise overwhelming in detail. For example, the small Salt Lake Tribune did a great job of putting together an interactive timeline about the disappearance of American women Susan Powell. Compare it with a text version.

The Knight Lab have a list of examples of how journalists and news organizations have been using the tool.

Here are also other examples from TimelineJS (not necessarily journalistic ones).

How can I create a timeline?

It’s very easy to make a timeline with the Google spreadsheet template provided by TimelineJS. If you don’t already have a Google account, you will need to sign up for the service (you can do this with any email).

You fill in the spreadsheet with your dates, text and links.

IMPORTANT – I originally had some problems getting the dates to work in the spreadsheet. This is because they have changed how the dates are read by the TimelineJS tool. All you need to do is click on the A column, then open the Format menu → Number →Plain Text.

You can see the spreadsheet I used to create the West Africa Independence timeline here.

More details are on the TimelineJS site or watch the tutorial below.

What else should journalists know about TimelineJS?

Cost: The software is free.

Support: There’s an excellent TimelineJS google discussion group where you can get help and support.

Languages: The software is currently available in 41 languages, including French, Portuguese, Afrikaans and Arabic. Click on the ‘More Options’ button in Step 3 to get to the language options.

WordPress: There is a WordPress plugin available.

TimelineJS was developed by Zach Wise, a photojournalist and multimedia producer who is currently an associate professor of journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Wise is also a former staff member of the New York Times multimedia team.

Author: Kate Hairsine

By Gerlind Vollmer

Imagine you are just finishing a story or blog post and suddenly realize that some crucial piece of information is missing.

Or maybe you only notice now that you forgot to take a picture of one of the people you interviewed.

Something is missing that you should have arranged to get early in the research process that you can no longer get at this late hour.

We’ve probably all experienced such nightmares. Yet they are so easy to avoid with a little bit of careful planning.

Think and plan before starting on your story

A tool that will help you get a grip on any story you’re working on is the research and production plan we’ve developed for you.

Think of each point on this checklist carefully as you research your story.

Find precise answers to each question. Write them down. This forces you to be very clear.

Only then set up your interviews or video shoots.

The elevator pitch

The thing that may be most difficult is coming up with an ultra-short summary of your story, the “elevator pitch“.

It is called elevator pitch because you should imagine meeting your boss in the elevator and only having a few seconds to “sell” your story before the boss gets off again.

You have to make clear what’s special about your story in one sentence to convince your boss quickly.

Focus, be precise and know where you are going

Maybe it helps to think of the elevator pitch as a Tweet on Twitter, where you only have 140 characters to tell it all. Can you explain why your story is exciting for the audience in 140 characters or less?

Summing up your story in just one sentence, in 140 characters or in the form of an “elevator pitch” will help you focus. It will give you a precise idea of what should be at the center of your story. And once you know what’s most important, you can take it from there.

Force yourself to write down all the answers to the questions on our checklist. You’ll see that making a production plan comes easy now. And if you tick things off as you go along, you definitely will not forget to take a picture of one of your protagonists or record that crucial bit of natural sound while you’re out in the field.

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timeline

Timelines are an attractive way to present data that relates to dates. They’re great for visualizing a sequence of events over time. Timelines can make history fun – or they can show part of your history in an interesting and structured way.

Instead of just presenting a boring list of dates, we can lay events out on a timeline, and then add pictures, links and video (depending on the timeline site) that correspond with whatever happened on that date.

There is a list of a few of the top timeline sites here. Some of the most popular and flexible ones, like Dipity, put limitations on their free accounts.

A Timetoast timeline

One website that enables you to easily create your own timeline at no cost is Timetoast.

While it can’t display video (at this writing, at least) it can do just about everything else. With the help of Vodpod, the timelines can even be embedded into WordPress.com blogs.

To create a timeline on Timetoast:

• Set up an account at timetoast.com or sign in if you’ve already got one.
• Under the headline “What would you like to do?” click on “Create a new timeline.”
• Enter your timeline’s title and upload a picture to illustrate it by clicking on “Choose an image” on the left.
• Give it a category if you want and then click “Go!”

• To add events on your timeline, click “Add Event”. A window will open where you can enter the title, date, a description and a link if you want. You can also upload a picture from this window.
• Click on “Create Event” and you’re done. Repeat as you wish.
• Another button allows you to create a “timespan” if you want to indicate an action/activity that happened for a specific period of time.

When you have finished, or just want to see what the final product will look like, click on “View this timeline” on the left side below the timeline.

When you are satisfied, publish the timeline by clicking on the “Draft (change this status)” link. Another screen will open and you can publish your timeline from there. You can also add tags if you like.

Once published, you can share the timeline on Twitter or Facebook, or post it in your blog.

How to embed a Timetoast timeline in WordPress

If you’ve got a WordPress.com blog, embedding a Timetoast timeline takes a little more effort. Timetoast uses flash and unfortunately WordPress.com doesn’t support flash. You can’t simply copy and paste the embed code in a WordPress.com blog. But don’t despair. There’s a way around that.

To publish on WordPress.com

1. Sign onto Vodpod
2. Back on Timetoast, click on “Embed / Share” under the timeline, and copy the embed code. You can also change the timeline’s dimensions by scrolling down and changing the width and height values, then generating new code, which will appear under the button.
3. Back in Vodpod, click on “Add Video.”
4. After your timeline appears, click on “Yes, This Is The Video.”
5. From the Vodpod main page, click on “Your Videos” and to the right of the timeline, click on “Share.” The drop-down menu should offer a “blog” option. Click that, and if you have connected your WordPress.com blog to the Vodpod account, a new window that opens should have your blog information.
6. You can enter a title for your post and some text and then publish directly to your blog, or make it a draft for later publishing.
7. Or, you can click on “Wordpress.com Shortcode” and get that code and then paste it into your blog post editor yourself.
8. Voilà, the timeline should be on your blog in no time.

By Kyle James and Thorsten Karg