I get a tad confused with to really separate place and space, but I'll try my best here. Spatial journalism is able to bring together areas where we simply pass through (spaces) and create dialogue and stories about these spaces to make them into places. Let's take the H1 Freeway for example. The H1 is a place that most of us drive on/through at least everyday. This is an area or a roadway that we simply pass through and probably don't have too many true memories or stories about that are very meaningful. News sources cover stories about traffic on the H1, accidents, etc. But further than that, we also now hear stories that make the H1 more of a place. 

http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/20130425_Police_officer_delivers_baby_girl_on_H1_Freeway.html?id=204758201

This Star Advertiser story is about a Police officer that helped to deliver a baby on the H1. The H1 became a place rather than a space for this police officer and this family, also most definitely for this newborn baby. Rather than just a space to pass through, this is a place where life began for this baby. I recall when this story happened, various local news stations covered this story and told this story of the H1 Baby being born. I'm sure this has happened many times, but now, we are able to tell stories digitally and create a bridge between finite and nontacit locations. 

Good explanation Mari!

Thanks, Sonya! I hope I was able to explain that correctly. 

If journalism is the connective tissue of a community, and our shared stories are what binds us together, then spatial journalism puts a place on that tissue and shows us where we gather, what stories we tell and where we tell them. In relation to our readings, I think of journalism as a primary way we inscribe our communities, by the "news" we cover (and also what we don't cover). That inscription shapes communities and makes places; it often is a rewriting of places as well, in the constant grappling that a community undertakes to make meaning of life and where they are and what they care about. So journalism, in that sense, is a way of sharing communal values through place, and when it's directly tied to a place, and easily accessible in that place, then interesting new things can happen. Think of Honolulu, for example. You can't possibly imagine the whole thing at once, so your mind might drift from Waikiki, to Pearl Harbor, to the North Shore to your home, to the park you like to visit, to the place where you work, to your classrooms, whatever, shifting from spot to spot, place to place, and it's in the shifting and thinking about what binds all of those things, that I think your impressions of the city form. With spatial journalism, you would not only have access to your impressions, but you also would be able to dig down deep into the context of each place you discover, good and bad, and approach it from a more holistic perspective of your impressions combined with other impressions. Think of a restaurant, for example, that you look up on Yelp. If you go to the restaurant and don't know anything about it beforehand, you have a very individualized perception of the place, based only on your sensory data and experience. But if you look up that restaurant on Yelp before (or after), then you suddenly are thrust into a conversation about that place. You agree or disagree with others. You think of points that were made that you didn't consider (and points that you feel were missed). So it suddenly becomes about the collective and the shared experience, rather than the individual inscription. So journalism also can work in that way. One experience in traffic court, for example, might be very typical or a significant anomaly with the ways things usually operate there. But if you are in court, and you read a profile on the judge, and how she likes to operate her courtroom, and other stories about the cast of characters that usually file through the building, and can compare your experiences with other experiences, then the place becomes more about a conversation with the inscriptions and characters engaged in the place than it does about a passive room, with four walls, and a bench.

I know that Cynthia touched on this in class, but I will use the example of the Stan Sheriff Center. Some people who are unfamiliar with what takes place in the arena may see it as just that, an arena (space). However, for those who are familiar with UH Athletics, know that some heart-pumping games have gone on in that arena (place). If someone were to ask me what are some of the top memories from the Stan Sheriff Center, I can tell you about the 1997 men's basketball win over nationally-ranked Kansas. Or, the 2006 women's volleyball win over USC in the NCAA Regionals. Or, most recently a women's volleyball win over Florida a couple of weeks ago. One quality in terms of journalism that all of these events had in common was the the games were on TV. This is just one form of journalism on those days that helped people to transform that Stan Sheriff Center from a space into a place.