Anyone who is looking for a concise orderly picture of the multiple terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and timeline of the attacks and response, cannot do better than the UK Guardian’s page by their guy Paddy Allen.

Events have gone on now for 3 days, starting before midnight on the 26th, and the timeline covers all three days (click on “Next” to view successive parts of the timeline, and on the camera symbols on the map to see some still photos). The Guardian also many articles providing good coverage and analysis.

This is the sort of information presentation which television news could do, but never seems to bother with. They have the computer graphics and know-how, they have our visual attention, but they squander our time showing us repeats of a few dramatic scenes or unidentifiable scenes straight from local news channels. For run-of-the-mill stories we have to watch file footage of pills running through a counter while the presenter talks about health care problems, Big Pharma, or the latest drug recall; our eyes could be better occupied watching informational graphics to fill in other aspects of the story. Most of us can take in information a lot faster than a tv anchor talks, so we are left twiddling our mental thumbs. Print media does a much better job with information graphics (and always gives more background and information than tv) but of course cannot compete with the web for timeliness or interactivity. No wonder people turn away from tv news, to web news sites.