Knight Lab StoryMap

Map-based interactive narratives — pin locations, add media, publish an embeddable story. Free, open-source, no coding.

Built for journalismOpen source

Adequate

https://storymap.knightlab.com · Reviewed 2026-04-02 · Editorial assessment by Mike Schneider — not an independent security audit

What should journalists know about Knight Lab StoryMap?

StoryMapJS is the simplest way to build a map-driven narrative on the web. Each slide pins a location and pairs it with text, images, and embedded media (YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Twitter, Flickr, DocumentCloud). The output is a responsive iframe that drops into any CMS. It's one of several free tools from Northwestern's Knight Lab — alongside TimelineJS and JuxtaposeJS — and has been in continuous use since 2013. The codebase (1,949 commits, 233 GitHub stars, 106 open issues as of early 2026) is maintained but not rapidly evolving. The authoring tool is functional, not polished: no collaboration, no version history, no offline mode. For what it does — free, fast, zero-code location storytelling — nothing else matches the simplicity. But if you need custom cartography, live data, or more than ~20 slides, you've outgrown it.

Best for

Location-driven narratives: a refugee's journey, a disaster timeline, a walking tour, a historical migration route. Quick-turnaround interactives for breaking news with a spatial dimension. Classroom projects. Stories where geography is the organizing principle. Also supports gigapixel mode for exploring high-resolution images (historic maps, artworks, satellite photos) without geographic coordinates.

Not for

Data-heavy map visualizations with hundreds of points (use Datawrapper, Flourish, or QGIS). Highly customized cartography or live-updating maps (use Mapbox Studio or Leaflet). Collaborative editing with multiple authors working simultaneously — StoryMapJS has no multi-user support. Stories with more than ~20 slides (Knight Lab's own recommendation). Time-based narratives where chronology matters more than geography (use TimelineJS instead).

Security & Privacy

Encryption in transit Yes

Data is scrambled while being sent to their servers

Encryption at rest Unknown

Data is scrambled when stored on their servers

Data jurisdiction United States (Northwestern University servers). Story data was formerly stored in Google Drive but migrated to Knight Lab's own infrastructure. Google account is used only for authentication — Knight Lab says it stores only a unique profile identifier, not your name or email.

Where servers are located — affects which governments can request your data

Security rating Adequate

Google OAuth used for author login. Knight Lab says it requests only your profile (unique ID) — not name, not email. Story content is stored on Knight Lab servers. Published stories are public to anyone with the URL. Northwestern University's privacy policy governs. No advertising. No analytics tracking disclosed on the authoring tool.

How to protect yourself:

Published storymaps are public — anyone with the URL can view them. There is no password protection or access control on published output. If your story involves sensitive locations (safe houses, source meeting points), publishing exact coordinates could endanger people. For sensitive projects, self-host using the open-source StoryMapJS library on your own infrastructure. The Google OAuth scope is narrow (profile only, no Drive access on new accounts), but older accounts may still have legacy Drive permissions — revoke those in Google account settings.

University-operated, grant-funded, open-source. Google OAuth scope is narrow (profile ID only). Published stories are inherently public with no access controls. At-rest encryption status is undocumented. Low risk for general journalism use. Not suitable for stories involving sensitive locations or sources that could be endangered by public coordinate disclosure.

Who Owns This

Owner Knight Lab, Northwestern University (Medill School of Journalism)

Funding John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (founding and ongoing grants), Robert R. McCormick Foundation, National Science Foundation. In 2024, Knight Foundation granted Northwestern $1M via Press Forward for AI-related journalism tools development at Knight Lab and the Computational Journalism Lab.

Business model Free academic resource. No advertising, no paid tiers, no data monetization. Sustained by grants and university support. This is a university lab project, not a commercial product — which means stability depends on continued grant funding, not revenue.

Known issues

Stamen basemap tiles (watercolor, toner lite) broke in October 2023 when Stamen could no longer afford free hosting. Existing storymaps using those tiles display an error message unless reconfigured to use Stadia Maps (requires a Stadia account) or switched to OpenStreetMap/Mapbox. No collaborative editing — multiple authors cannot work on the same storymap simultaneously. No version history or undo. Knight Lab recommends a 20-slide maximum; performance degrades beyond that. Older accounts created before the Google Drive migration may need manual re-authentication. The Cooper Hewitt watercolor basemap tiles sometimes fail to load in the editor but render correctly in the published output. Gigapixel mode requires hosting image tiles on your own web server. 106 open GitHub issues as of early 2026 — the backlog is large relative to the maintenance pace. No WCAG accessibility audit has been published.

Pricing

Free. No paid tiers. No usage limits on the hosted authoring tool.

This is an editorial assessment based on publicly available information as of 2026-04-02, using our published methodology. Independent security review is pending. Security posture can change at any time. This is not a guarantee of safety.

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