While this is a few years old, it is a very good profile of a woman, Erin Aigner, at the NYTimes using GIS to assist the journalists in their stories.  They discuss how the maps she creates sometimes drive the story.  This article is in the June 2007 ACSM Bulletin.

http://www.acsmcongress.org/bulletinonline/bull227/giscareer.pdf
 
 
A great article, Demystifying the Persistent Ambiguity of GIS as "tool" versus "Science" written by Dawn Wright (OSU), Michael Goodchild, and James Procotor. 

The paper appears in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87(2): 346-362, 1997.

Click here to read the article.