Examples of Visual Journalism

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/politics/2008_EG_FINANCES.html
This first example is from the New York Times website. It details the financial contribution made to different presidential candidates in different geographic areas of the U.S. A map of the United States is presented on the screen, with circles representing regions that have given money to a candidate. Each circles represents an area of 1000 zip codes, which allows a reader to pinpoint his or region with ease. One can look at the groupings of circles (or blank spaces, which represent where no money has been raised) to see trends among the support base for each candidate. For example, Hillary Clinton has many overlapping circles in the Northeast, but hardly any in the Great Plains and the northern states. Viewers can seen the actual dollar amount of the donations, but they are also visually shown on the map, as the size of the circle is directly proportional to the amount of the donations. Those who did not know that Mitt Romney is a Mormon might be alerted to that fact by the large circle around Utah on his map. This feature, while not accompanied by any text, still manages to convey the trends and analysis of campaign contribution for the upcoming election.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/04/16/Patrick_said_Obama_said/
In this article, a series of quotes show the similarites in the campaigns of presidential hopeful Barack Obama and Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. On one side of the screen, Patrick's quotes are displayed, with a description of how they were used in his campaign. Running parallel to this on the right side of the screen are Obama's quotes, which display marked similarities to the Patrick quotes. Arrows connects the quotes that are similar; for example, the "hard work and beliefs" quotes in section #2 are connected. This feature complements an article on Obama's "borrowing" from Patrick's successful gubernatorial campaign by laying out the argument for similariety by tying together their common words. A simple but effective graphic, this piece is a prime example of the powerful effect of visual journalism.