A number were deployed for the 2020 campaign, including Mass. Newsletters are another key engagement tool. But the enduring value of this approach is that it capitalizes on the notion of the campaign as an evolving narrative - a very familiar approach for political reporters - and naturally translates this to podcasting.Īfter local controversies surrounding coverage of protests in Pittsburgh following the murder of George Floyd, local political reporter Alexis Johnson left the Post-Gazette newspaper and produced a documentary on the mayoral campaign for Vice, her new employer. Perhaps ironically, while the medium was unusual for current elections reporting, the substantive coverage, deep and nuanced, was highly traditional in its focus on candidates and issues, with a great deal of attention to the horserace. In Cleveland, Ideastream (public media) launched an 18-episode podcast called After Jackson on the race to succeed four-term incumbent Mayor Frank Jackson. There have been a number of successes - at least in terms of garnering audience and driving conversations - in the use of new forms of media in and around elections. It combed through almost the entirety of the major mayoral candidates’ websites and then effectively updated the work throughout the new mayor’s first year in office, comparing governing results with website promises. These more recent efforts draw on previous ones from around the country, notably the Human Voter Guide from KPCC Los Angeles in 2017, and the ChiVote consortium in Chicago in 2019, which included 10 news organizations coordinated by the Better Government Association.Īnother time-honored technique, fact-checking, was the focus of a clever initiative by WLPN, Nashville’s public radio station. And here’s another overall guide to coverage, from another smaller organization, the Chatham News-Record. Here’s a reminder from Injustice Watch that guides can particularly help voters with races for more obscure offices, including local judges. Elsewhere, here is a great guide to campaign coverage overall from the Texas Tribune, as well as two recent examples of other offerings from them: A guide to the state’s March 2022 primary ballots, and a look-up tool for checking on your representatives after redistricting. This was a weekly set of issue guides, structured as a quiz that enabled voters to choose the candidate whose views most closely matched their own. Among the most successful of these appear to have been those published recently by The City in New York, the Texas Tribune and a consortium of Chicago newsrooms.Īt the local level, the best work has almost certainly been done by The City, with its Meet Your Mayor. It turns out that sophisticated, interactive voter guides - digital turns on the work long performed by organizations like the League of Women Voters - are among the most effective techniques adopted by newer news organizations, as well as more established players seeking to engage voters and potential voters. In the practical spirit, it contains quite a few links. ![]() This column draws heavily on that research. A look at eight major citiesĮarlier this year, I did some research for my consulting clients at the Lenfest Institute for Journalism in Philadelphia on what might be learned from such efforts in the closely contested mayoral elections in other large cities over the last three years, including Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Nashville, New York, and Pittsburgh, as well as selected efforts elsewhere. I hope this may be of practical use, even over the next seven weeks. ![]() ![]() ![]() I want to talk about something more prosaic, but in many local communities perhaps likely to have greater impact: ways newsrooms can directly aid voters in making the critical choices they face. Possible stories abound, from the January 6 investigation, to gerrymandering and voter suppression, to struggles over the administration of the election machinery itself. News organizations have created teams to cover democracy as a beat. One recent poll even showed this as the issue of most concern to voters. As the midterm elections loom, there’s a lot of talk about threats to democracy, and what to do about it.
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