Suggestions on alternative location?

We are using the component as a press release submission system, which means the person posting may be posting in reference to an alternate location. That means we can't use the author's location to generate the google map. Any suggestions on an alternative to this challenge? I was thinking about asking the author for a zip code as a custom field, and then editing the map module to somehow use the zip code as the map marker, but I have no idea if that will work or if it is the best approach. Any suggestions?