Over at Personal Democracy Forum they’ve been admittedly a little map happy. I don’t blame them. The two maps that Joshua Levy has recently pointed out are great examples of using simple technology to get across a complex message instantly through visuals.

Just taking a quick look at the Health Care That Works map one can see how recent hospital closures adversely affect low-income and minority New Yorkers.

It’s very similar to the now regularly cited information-map ChicagoCrime.org, which gives visitors a chance to search local crime by street. What ChicagoCrime.org and these other maps represents is news without the newspaper. But what really gets my juices going is when this type of information gathering is crowdsourced.

A couple of weeks ago I asked a question: “what kinds of investigations can NewAssignment.Net do with these mash-up maps that is unique and really captures the spirit of networked journalism?”

Well, at the Cincinnati Enquirer, a Gannett paper charged with reinventing itself, they may have found a great example. It created a map of bars in Ohio that violate a new smoking ban. With more than 1,488 bars in the city – my guess is that one reporter either wouldn’t be able to get the job done – or would die a happy drunk trying. So Gregory Korte, the Enquirer’s investigative reporter opened the map to the crowd. “We’re asking you to help us report the story by telling us what’s going on in all those places we can’t get to.”

The collective map was built using Atlas, simple technology that can build maps online and allow readers to plot comments and photos.

And as Faneuil Media points out, there are other examples of crowdsourced maps popping up.

“Both of these maps are experiments, and neither has tons of user contributions. But I think they’re still very important examples. They show how sites with a community of readers can coordinate that community to collect and publish information that would otherwise be unavailable.”

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David Cohn is the editor for NewAssignment.Net’s blog