A 2-minute read to help focus your coverage
Election Day is next week. Don’t forget these 5 things.
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Election Day is next Tuesday, and if your coverage touches elections in any way, thank you for your work. You’ve probably spent a lot of time and energy thinking about how you can best help your audience understand what’s happening and participate in this upcoming election.
After your candidate profiles and voter guide are live, there’s plenty of work to be done. Yes, you’ll share results, monitor lines and movement at polling places. But if our aim is to be a public service, we should also be honing in this week on how we can be relentlessly useful for our audience.
Today we’re sharing five quick ideas of what you can do. (And I mean quick — this newsletter is less than 500 words!)
- Make basic info easy to find. Keep in mind that many people are just now tuning in to the election. Don’t assume people have contextual knowledge about candidates and races, or know how or where to vote. Instead make sure any voter guide or election information is easy for people to find on your website and on social platforms. Pay attention to SEO, as many people will be googling to find this type of information.
- Check headlines. Watch your content for unnecessarily polarizing and inflammatory headlines. Is a race “heated” or is it close? Are two candidates “battling” or running for the same seat? We know that even-handed content can be easily undermined by an unnecessarily inflammatory headline. Watch out for these sensational headlines, and use our headline checklist, Anti-Polarization checklist and word choice resource for guidance around specific words and framing that can feel polarizing.
- Encourage reasonable expectations around logistics and vote counting. Remind people ahead of time that vote counting takes time and results may not be ready on election night. Explain that certain hiccups with polling places and voting machines are normal. We compiled some pre-written explainers you can copy and share on how vote counting and other processes work.
- Respond to misinformation. If people are confused and have questions, or are doubting the fairness and accuracy of election results and processes in comment sections, try to find time to respond. Take a deep breath, drop the defensive tone and feel free to copy any of our pre-written responses to help.
- Focus on providing support, not anxiety. If we are inundating people with alerts, especially ones with an alarmist tone, it’s likely people will tune us out. This is a time for offering straightforward facts, not raising provocative questions in headlines to get clicks. Focus on sharing the most important information, and be wary of overusing breaking news alerts or sharing too many updates that might feel more overwhelming than helpful.
For more tips and ideas, check out our Election Trust Kit (also available in Spanish!).
As always, our team is here to be helpful! If you have questions or need support, respond to this newsletter or get in touch with us on LinkedIn.
At Trusting News, we learn how people decide what news to trust and turn that knowledge into actionable strategies for journalists. We train and empower journalists to take responsibility for demonstrating credibility and actively earning trust through transparency and engagement. Learn more about our work, vision and team. Subscribe to our Trust Tips newsletter. Follow us on Twitter, BlueSky and LinkedIn.
Project manager Mollie Muchna (she/her) has spent the last 10 years working in audience and engagement journalism in local newsrooms across the Southwest. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she is also an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism. She can be reached at mollie@trustingnews.org and on Twitter @molliemuchna.
