> Having no map is weird.

Yes, a failure of both the journalist and the editor.

Sadly, this kind of failure is all too common. I encounter articles that often omit a photo of the "thing" the article is describing. This (no photo) might have made some sense fifty years ago in the heyday of paper print where including a photo was much more work. But today, for HTML publishing, it is just an indication of failure on the part of the publisher.

50 years ago was 1976. Pretty sure there was no particular problem incuding photos or illustrations in paper journalism at that time. Maybe for very low-budget newsletters it would have been.