I find automaps to be much better than journals on average. Baldurs Gate II is for instance quite good with landmarks for sights in the cities that should be well known (its frustrating to search for shops and such), but I felt they sometimes relied too much on the map rather than giving hints to where a place is (for instance it doesnt make much sense for the player to automatically know where Valygar's home is, one should have to ask around for that info, in a way this is like Oblivions compass on a smaller scale).
Even though its not an automap I like the realism of Gothic's system where one is given a map rather than magically automapping... But that system could sure use manual annotations.
As for journals I realise that it's nice to have the option to just record any dialog into the journal by clicking a button during the actual event. Some games incorporate this, but I dont recall which ones...